Flying high: Megeve is hugely popular among the Parisian setAmerica’s east coast is where I learned to ski. Hated it. There were icy mountains, freezing cold winds, ancient chair-lifts and my brother’s borrowed, long, itchy underwear.
Boots felt like bear claws. ‘You will thank us some day,’ said my parents, as they ushered me off to a class.
Many years later, I married a Frenchman, once a ski instructor, who has that rare gift of patience. He comes from a small Alpine village and hates crowds, so he took me to places where the French ski and where they outnumber the tourists.
That’s how I discovered Megeve, where only ten per cent of skiers are British. It is one of the most beautiful places in the Alps — a shining crystal bowl of ice and snow at the base of Mont Blanc.
This year, my six-year-old son Luca and I joined my friend Catherine and her little boy, who were staying at a chalet called L’Alpaga, Maravin was founded by mountain guides with romantic names such as Clovis and Balthus and Eustache, all of whom revered Mont Blanc.
They would have loved L’Alpaga, which is wooden and charming, with lots of balconies with carved out hearts.
Our room — L’Alpaga rents full chalets, apartments or rooms — was on the edge of a cliff and had a sliding glass door overlooking Mont Blanc. In the morning, the mountain was pink and gold, in the evening a deep purple.
Some days, we did not go skiing early and went sledding instead. Right outside the hotel is a wonderful little hill where staff handed out sleds, toboggans and made reservations for us to go dogsledding.
Starting out: It is the perfect setting for first-time skiers and sleddersIn the evening, they made us hot chocolate and whipped up special spaghetti for the children.
Megeve itself is chic, but relaxed. Children are everywhere. The town’s roots are pretty patrician,though.
The Rothschilds, who were fed up with St Moritz, started visiting Megeve in the 1910s. In the 1920s, the Baronne Noemie de Rothschild started the property boom by building a hotel.
Also, crucially, the man who invented ski trousers, Armand Allard, came from Megeve, and the best scene in Charade, where Audrey Hepburn meets Cary Grant, is filmed there.
Megeve skiing is composed of Domaine Evasion Montblanc — Mont d’Arbois, Jaillet, Rochebrune and Cote 2000. My favourite was Jaillet. In the morning, I dropped my son at ski school, then set off on trails that were long and heavily wooded.
At lunchtime, I picked him up and we ate at a tiny restaurantbehind the ski school where all the instructors went.
Historic: The resort became popular when the Rothschilds built a hotel thereOn day one, Luca stumbled on his skis and fell. When I tried to leave him, two tears rolled down
his cheeks and I felt horribly guilty.
But I pushed him into the line of other howling children and skiied off with a heavy heart.
Two hours later, when I picked him up for lunch, he was burning down the bunny hill. ‘That was too easy, mama,’ he said.
At night, I’d like to say I went out partying, but Catherine and I were happy testing the theory that when you drink good wine in front of Mont Blanc, you don’t get hung over.
We stayed only four days, but four days’ skiing stretches into a fine holiday.
On the train home from Geneva, I decided my parents were right about me one day thanking them for pushing me into ski school — and I was right to marry a man who introduced me to Megeve.
Travel Facts
L’alpaga has rooms from £245 a night, 00 33 4505 465 61, lodgemontagnard.com. BA flies from Gatwick to Geneva from £99 return, 0844 493 0787, ba.com.
source: dailymail
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