According to Lord Mancroft, there are only three things that you need to learn in skiing: ‘How to put on your skis, how to slide downhill and how to walk along the hospital corridor’. What he forgot to mention is that you also have to learn to enjoy sporting clothes and equipment that cost the equivalent of the Greek national debt just to stand in sub-zero temperatures and suffer height vertigo. And additionally, you need to grasp that you will spend un bras et une jambe simply to break un bras et une jambe. Only a mug would do it. Yet, ooops, I’m winter-holidaying in the ski resort of Val d’Isere.

I’m in Val d’Isere with Ella, my 12 year-old daughter, a genetic aberration who likes to ski 24/7 and would happily slalom backwards down a black run. We’re here because of maternal love and Scott Dunn, the luxury tour operator beloved of celebrities and royals. On first sight, Val looks like toy town after someone has sneezed the best Bolivian cocaine over it, with a pretty layer of snow over footpaths, the Baroque church and traditional Savoyard chalets built from wood and local stone. It’s in a majestic setting and peopled less by fur coats than serious skiers, including the likes of Ben Elton, Peter Gabriel and Coldplay drummer, Will Champion.

If you don’t ski, you can do an array of lunatic snowy things like snowmobile driving (junior Schumacher on ice), driving on ice (Schumacher on ice), ice diving (going beneath the ice of Lac de Tignes, for the truly crazed), dog sledding, snow-shoeing, ice climbing (scaling a frozen waterfall with the aid of ice axes and crampons, I ask you…) and paragliding. Or take scenic flights and vivez la montaigne en helicoptere. Or you can eat, which is what I like to do.

But first to our lodgings. We’re staying in Marie, a lovely chalet which sleeps eight, with an open-plan living-area, roaring fire, exposed reclaimed timber and stone, and Hammam and plunge pool overlooking snow-capped mountains. Marie is one of a family of chalets nestling in a cul-de-sac. (If you want to do the oligarch thing, you can stay next door in Marie’s impressive sibling, Le Rocher. A snip with a starting price of £32,660 a week, it sleeps 14 and has ironic arty décor including groovy chandeliers partout, Alice in Wonderland throne chairs, a technogym and a screen on which to watch films whilst in the pool.) It soon becomes clear that we’re onto something special here. Drivers who whisk you hither and thither are included in the price and there’s one member of staff to every two guests, for who nothing is too much trouble.

Take Thomas Checkettts, the chef in Marie. He cut his culinary teeth working with Gordon Ramsay and so must be used to difficult people. Which is fortunate as I’m keen to follow a macrobiotic diet. Forget raclette and fondue, I want sea-weed and miso soup as my mountain staples. Thomas rises gamely to my Madonna-style aspirations and conjures up delicacies like beetroot jelly, sweet pea granite, and garlic and spinach veloute. But very soon I’m lured to the Other Side by his beautifully-presented gastronomic dishes of foie gras, succulent fowl with rosti and breakfasts of smoked salmon and scrambled egg with truffle oil. Diet be damned!

It would be unforgivably piggy to do nothing but eat. So I raise myself for a sports massage from physio Toby Clifford, who is about ten foot tall and all compacted brawn in army fatigue trousers. He is to deep-tissue massage what crevices are to wrinkles. Words like muscular release, relief and amazing come to mind. In the summer he pummels soldiers for the Ministry of Defence. It’s enough to make anyone join the Army. Then in a fit of further exertion, later I walk to my bedroom for a facial from Pamper Off Piste. Pamper On Piste, now that would be interesting.

Afterwards, I swim in Oxygene, the erstwhile winter Olympics press centre now converted into a sort of Chelsea Harbour Club at altitude. It boasts hydro-massage, sauna, steam bath and Art, including life-size cows in the reception area. Plus there’s a pool where women in black costumes and goggles do fierce lengths. You probably take your life into your hands as much in these lanes as you do on the slopes.

Next day, I go (drum roll) snow-shoeing with guide Michel Gavet and a group. We walk in the silence. The sounds are of nothing but falling snow. In the valley below there’s a dam and a submerged village, the church spire of which sometimes shows above the water. People are skiing like traversing ants on the mountains opposite. There are eagles, white hare, roe deer, wolves (apparently) and trees laden with lichen and snow. It’s beautiful. It’s exhilarating.

We press on. I fall over countless times, often ending up stuck knee-high in snow. It’s no walk in the park; it’s more like an aerobics session for advanced mountain goats. As we pick our way gingerly down steep and slippery snow-covered rocks like lame donkeys, there’s a Virgin Mary in a rocky shrine. A bit like the ones you find on hazardous corners of fatal roads, overseeing the accidents. I’m glad to get back to terra more firma and less slippery.

I head to L’Arolay, a rustic restaurant Savoyard with views over the Isere Gorge, for lunch. Here they serve Cremeaux du Pere Francis (a basket of potatoes and an entire cheese in a box,) which my friend, Jane, polishes off, while I content myself with a family-sized serving of tartfilette and Ella demolishes a cow-sized steak tartare. Afterwards, groaning at the waists, we pop down to the Chevallot patisserie for some gastro-porn: think window displays of tartellette framboise and eclairs and, inside, counters of fougasse and croque courgette, and an eponymous owner who is often voted, ‘best pastry cook’ in France.

Then things take a very curious twist. Give me a map of the pistes, and I usually feel giddy just looking at it but Val d’Isere is a legendary area: 300km of marked runs, two glaciers, 1930 metres of vertical drops and 90 ski lifts. And then, reader, I do it. Under the expert eye of Ken Smith, a moniteur independent, I put on a pair of skis and hit the slopes…