ARGUABLY THE BEST SKI RESORT IN THE WORLD AND CERTAINLY THE NO.1 CHOICE FOR OUR CLIENTS

Partly because we have no large ski areas of our own and partly because we are an island nation, the British are among the best-travelled and most discerning skiers in the world. We were pivotal to the development of the sport and the tourist infrastructure that now surrounds it, way back at the beginning of this century. Today the average British skier probably has greater knowledge and experience of a wider variety of ski countries and resorts than his counterpart in any other nation.

So when we find that more British skiers and boarders holiday in Val d’Isère, France, in the course of a winter than in any other single ski station, does this mean that Val d’Isère is the best ski resort in the world? Not quite. Frankly there are many other better ski resorts with a much greater selection of hotels of all standards, gastronomically superior restaurants, more amusing bars, more dramatic scenery, more atmospheric mountain restaurants, more welcoming natives and so on.

But Val d’Isère is probably the resort that has access to the best all-round ski area in the world, the Espace Killy. (True, Tignes has access to the same area, but while Val may be no great beauty, concrete Tignes is most definitely the ugly sister and lacks the special alpine ambience of its neighbour.) With just over 100 lifts compared to the 300 to be found in the Trois Vallées, the Espace Killy is obviously not the largest ski area in the world, but size isn’t everything and this region has as much skiing as one could ever need, not to mention the longest winter in the Alps. (The winter ski season here begins in late November and continues until early May and the early- and late-season conditions are seldom disappointing. And I should know, since I have been beginning and ending my winters here for many years.)

The main centre of Val d’Isère has been virtually rebuilt over the past 25 years and many of the buildings are imaginative contemporary interpretations of the traditional stone and wood Savoyard style. (The winter of 2003/2004 saw yet further pedestrianisation and a remodelling of the centre of the resort around the Tourist Office.) Also, because centuries ago Val was the hunting village of the Dukes of Savoy, it is a real year-round community and accordingly has an atmosphere and sense of history that is lacking in the French purpose-built ski stations. Each winter restrictions regarding motor vehicles are further strengthened and it can only be a matter of time before the whole centre becomes (virtually) a car-free zone. (If you do choose to bring a car to Val, the best advice is to put it away in a car park or garage for the duration of your stay and forget about it.)

Ironically, Val d’Isère’s development and fame as a ski resort owes as much to outsiders as to the local Savoyards. As the resort expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, much of the impetus for development came from a strong contingent of enthusiastic and hard-working people from lowland Alsace who made the village their winter home. Val’s most famous son, Jean-Claude Killy, the man who helped to put the resort on the map with his 1968 Olympic victories at Grenoble, was originally from Alsace, as were other pioneers such as Charles Diebold and Jacques Mouflier, who now have pistes named in their honour. Still today there is a strong Alsatian presence in Val, with several key businesses being in the hands of families originally from Alsace.

In the past couple of decades another race of outsiders has been crucial to Val d’Isère’s development: the British. After the Alsatians, the British were the first to recognise the extraordinary potential of this village and its ski area. (Native Parisian skiers, by contrast, have always preferred the more chic ambience of Courchevel.) The British invasion has been such that we now account for more than 30% of the resort’s winter visitors, and at low season periods such as January you get the feeling that the resort would be empty were it not for the British. It was here, over 20 years ago, that Dick Yates-Smith set up the seminal Dick’s Tea-Bar, a bar-nightclub that revolutionised apres-ski in the Alps. Nowadays there are a number of British-run bars and restaurants and some of the ski shops and ski schools are effectively controlled by the Brits.