Can't ski, won't ski

There's a point in every afternoon's skiing where I'm going too fast down a slope I can't negotiate and I temporarily forget how to slow down. This is frequently a result of one too many piste-side Jägermeisters. The way I eventually stop is by achieving a spectacular pratfall (I suspect I am not alone in this). On this occasion, as I screeched down a narrow gulley completely out of control, I wobbled, lost a ski, and shot through the air as though from a cannon, shedding gloves, poles, goggles and hat in mid-air, and landing in a heap some 50 metres further down the slope.

Thoroughly humiliated, I staged what my late Scottish granny would have called 'a wingding', insisting on being taken off the mountain and refusing to get back on skis again for the rest of the week. This gave my husband George and our friend James the run of the mountain - the mountain in this instance being the whole of the Portes du Soleil, a ski area that stretches from Mont Blanc to Lake Geneva and incorporates 650km of slopes and some 200 lifts. There was a trifle too much soleil in the offing while we were there, so the skiing was more restricted than usual, but there was plenty of off-piste action to keep us all perfectly happy.

In many resorts, abandoning the skiing halfway through would condemn you to a dreary vigil in a pine-clad bedroom, staring at a DVD of On Her Majesty's Secret Service and waiting for the skiers to come home. Not so in Les Gets, a 12th-century village high up in the French Alps. And certainly not when staying at the Ferme de Montagne, a chalet run like clockwork by Suzanne Dixon-Hudson, the Australian owner. The minute she saw I'd bottled it on the skiing front, she arranged an array of activities that meant I deserved the pre-dinner cocktails, fondues and tasting menus as much as the skiers - and a lot more than Selin, James's wife, who spent most of her time being massaged by the chalet's charming and expert in-house beauty therapist.

There was a stunning glacier lake, Lac de Montirond, not far away, with everything you ask a lake to have: a restaurant, Le Bout du Lac, serving local trout and good beer, at one end; pony rides for our young children at the other; and mounds of frogspawn fringing its turquoise depths the whole way round.

One morning we took the cable car from Les Gets to Mont Chery and walked back down to lunch in the village. This involved a long stroll down gentle slopes and steep ravines, through woods, snowfields, flowers and alpine pastures. Menthol-fresh air filled our shrivelled city lungs and Mont Blanc towered above its fellows as we descended. I loved the walk, but I enjoyed the route even more when I repeated it another day on horseback. The Ranch du Lac offers 'ski joering', a combination of skiing and riding that is only for kinky and mentally deficient daredevils with its combination of flying hooves, steep slopes, skis, low-lying branches, and leather harnesses. The ranch also offers more sedate half-day treks on picturesque Appaloosa horses, spotted like Dalmatian dogs, with Western saddles so comfortable you feel as though you're riding in an armchair. Embarrassing to confess, but my third visit to the same scenic spot was my favourite, involving as it did being driven up in one of the Ferme de Montagne's immaculate Chryslers by one of its charming ski guides, who set up a comically perfect picnic complete with white tablecloth, wine glasses, elaborately folded napkins and delectable cold roast guinea fowl. It was like a Downton Abbey away-day.

The ratio of staff to guests at the chalet is extremely Downton (series one era, of course). Suzanne has peopled the Ferme with easy-going young guides, each an expert in a different field. One was the off-piste guy, one the snowboarder, one the speed freak They are all trained and overseen by Carol Dean, who has spent ten seasons at the chalet and knows the mountains as well as Heidi ever could. And the indoor staff are just as expert and eager to please. They happily baby-sat Olga, four, and Joe, three, in the mornings while we were off working up an appetite, and then filled us up with extraordinarily delicious food at every hour of the day and night.

Suzanne, appropriately for the author of a cookery book called The Boozy Chef, takes her food and her wine extremely seriously. The menu is ambitious French haute cuisine with Pacific Rim touches and it hits every mark perfectly. The skiers, of course, tucked in without a flicker of guilt, as did I after my hard afternoons of ice-skating and explorations of artisanal chocolate shops in the village. And so did Selin, who had doubtless exhausted herself sipping a vodka and tonic in the hot tub overlooking the pine-clad hills from the decking outside, ahead of yet another hot-stone massage.

This is the Ferme de Montagne's greatest achievement: to keep everyone happy, be they a skier, a Persian cat in human form like Selin, a small child, or me. ES

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Three-night luxury break at Ferme de Montagne from £895pp (0844 669 8652; fermedemontagne.com)