Come here when you want near certain snow in December or late April. Few other places in the Alps can promise it, and the Grande Motte glacier keeps running when everything else has closed.

Two very different villages sit either side of a high col. Val d'Isère grew from a real village and still reads like one, with good restaurants, a lively and expensive bar scene, and chalets and hotels to match. Tignes is functional high altitude building from the 1960s, with the advantage that almost everything is ski in and ski out and apartments are the norm.

The skiing is exceptional for strong skiers. Enormous vertical, the Face de Bellevarde which held the Olympic downhill in 1992, and some of the most extensive lift accessed off piste anywhere. The blues are more demanding than the grading suggests, so second week skiers should treat them with a little respect.

Val d'Isère also has one of the best mountain restaurant scenes in France, and the good ones book up weeks ahead.