Famous for tartiflette, wine and that most wonderful of winter sports (obviously all my own opinion) – skiing.

Val d’Isère is one of the stages for the FIS Alpine Ski World Cup races, and with good reason. You’re pretty much guaranteed good snow all season, and when linked in with Tignes (you can get a lift pass covering both areas) you have over 300km of slopes throughout l’Espace Killy at your disposal. Especially if you head to the higher slopes.

Not to mention, it’s the ski resort of choice for ​Edina and Patsy from Ab Fab…

I’ve skiied in a few different locations over the years, in Canada, Finland and France, but Val d’Isère remains my favourite. It’s such a pretty little village, and the scenery of alpine mountain peaks poking through the clouds? Well, who doesn’t love that?!

I’d say it’s definitely geared more towards intermediate skiers and above, but there is a good range of beginner slopes as well.​Whatever your skiing/snowboarding proficiency, you’ll find well-groomed, snow covered pistes to suit you!

There are plenty of opportunities for beginners and improvers to take lessons at the various ski schools as well.

Flying to Val d’Isère is very easy and the transfer time is short. From Geneva it’s around 2 hours and 1.5 hours from Chambery. We flew in to Chambery from Gatwick. Admittedly, our transfer time to Val d’Isère was a little longer because the snow chains on the coach tyres needed to be adjusted frequently.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to fly, you could get the overnight ski train to Bourg-St-Maurice which is about 45 minutes by bus to ​Val d’Isère.

This depends entirely on who you book through, we went with Neilson. 

As a resort, Val d’Isère is definitely one of the more expensive, both in terms of lift pass costs (currently 278€ for a 6 day) and apres ski with costs to rival Switzerland, so if you’re looking for a budget trip, it probably won’t be here.

Tignes is a little cheaper, but I’m told it loses lots of the charm that Val d’Isère has, due to its more modern buildings.

A trip to Val d’Isère is not complete without heading to La Folie Douce, because who doesn’t want to dance on tables in ski boots, whilst being sprayed with champagne and listening to cheesy Europop?

And if you have a little too much fizz and are unable to ski down? There’s a gondola…

All of the information you could possibly need on Val d’Isère is here!