Fish and Pips 

Linking Meribel to Courchevel, La Tania and the high-altitude resorts Val Thorens and Les Menuires, the 3 Valleys ski area is ginormous, endlessly varied, and you can ski for days on end without ever doing the same run twice. Plus the lift system and snowmaking are state-of-the-art, so you can cover loads of ground right up till the end of season. Of the many highlights, the long, wide, rolling red Jerusalem run, which takes you from the top of the Tougnète lift down to the old village of St Martin de Belleville, is our idea of piste-skiing perfection.

The Rond Point (call it ‘the Ronnie’ to sound like a seasonaire), just below the Rhodos gondola’s mid-station, is the classic après spot, and it gets pretty full-on. Old, young, and pint-sized get involved with the ski-boot dancing to local bands and, once the toffee vodkas start going down, there’s generally a bit of crowdsurfing. You can catch a bus from here into the town, often advisable after a few drinks, but plenty of people choose to play ‘dodge the piste basher’ in the dark on the Doron run down.

When we first started looking for chalets to hire, we were so young it took a while for us to be taken seriously. But we’ve always found Méribel incredibly friendly. Its big community of seasonaires, mainly British with a sprinkling of Aussies and Kiwis, is really welcoming, and we put down roots straight away. Our staff have become almost like a big family,too. Fishstock, our end-of-season party for suppliers and staff and friends, has become an institution, usually rocked by the local band Bring Your Sister. And in April we had our first Hag do – a combined Hen and Stag do – for Alice, one of our chefs, and Marky, our resort driver, and we all went skiing in full costume.

Alice and Marky got married in Méribel too, on the terrace of one of our chalets, with marquees, a bar around the hot tub, a cake made of local cheese, and our favourite local live
band Bring Your Sisters. It was fantastic. The bride and groom wrote their own, very sweet vows, which included ‘I promise to make you a coffee every morning, just the
way you like it.’ We were both in floods.

By 11am you can forget about it. But around 9am, when it’s freshly groomed and drenched in morning sunshine, the Creux run, dropping down from the Saulire over to Courchevel, is divine. It’s worth getting up half an hour earlier to be the first up there, before the crowds and the sun start turning it into a mushy motorway. When the weather’s rubbish, we head for La Tania between Méribel and Courchevel, down mountain, as it’s in the trees, so visibility is always better there. It also has the major bonus of Roc Tania, one of our favourite places to eat. It’s nothing fancy, but the steak is great, the prawns delicious and the kebabs to die for. When the weather’s good, the terrace catches the last of the day’s sun, too. Pippa’s family from Kent, pictured here, who stay with us every year, take us out for lunch there, which inevitably involves much rosé, toffee vodka, the mountain liqueur génépi and Irish coffees.

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