When home is no longer where the heart is

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, so they say, and I have found myself a mountain tiger to wrestle. We have just returned from the Southern French Alps, from a cute little ski resort called Valberg, and I have fallen in love.

Having broken my nose on dry slopes in Kent aged 15, I was late to skiing, teaching myself aged thirty on a Christmas short break in Switzerland the year Tom and I nearly split up; the experience, and Tom’s patience as I flopped and floundered down the slopes on a holiday we could barely afford, and offering Jonah, back then a very tricky six-year-old, and tiny Ava who’d never before seen so much snow a new view on the world, acting as a sort of glue bonding us back together as a family.

We never made it back to Switzerland. The exclusive resort where Tom had found a miraculously cheap apartment, was clearly out of our league – where a tin of beans cost four quid, and the fur hat and designer sunglass-sporting poseurs on the slopes, many of whom were educated at one of the myriad finishing schools in the area, failed to alleviate my pervading sense of insecurity, not least my own fear of heights on peaks that soared above the clouds.

Not so Valberg, a warm and welcoming village on the balmy Southern French alps, where azure skies and wide pistes make for a pleasant break even with two kids whose bilateral coordination made skiing a tricky skill to acquire, and even my own latent fears of faceplanting on sheet ice melted under the warm sun. It was our third visit here. This time, without being cocky, I actually got quite good.

When you’re on the slopes, that’s all that matters. Reader, I ski, therefore I am. There is nothing quite like it for feeling at one with the world. For Jonah, who only at the beginning of half-term was bemoaning the fact he is only good at “not cool stuff”, to become not just a competent skier, but one whose instructor told him, as he passed his one star grading, that he is very good, was the confidence boost he needed; not least a healthy diversion from his Minecraft obsession. We managed a full week of digital detox, and he emerged, sun-kissed, rosy-cheeked and even lankier of leg from all the fresh air and sunshine to which he’d been exposed. Ava too, perhaps, will soon overtake him, as she is beginning to in maths. Nevermind she has only ten centile coordination according to her specialist; on the slopes she is more eagle than penguin for all she looks like a fluffy duck as she shuffles along without poles as we wait for the ski lift.

But it’s the mountain itself that delights me, from the winding drive up through the glittering gorge that shimmers with icicles reflecting off the clear skies, to the ascent and descent through snow capped peaks and valleys: it feels as much like god’s own country as anywhere on this godforsaken planet. Compared to gritty East London, it’s heaven.

But there are benefits to living in this part of the world. Soaring property prices is one of them, and leveraging them might just enable us to own a slice of it. We found a pretty little cottage for sale. With luck, we can buy it, tacking it on to our mortgage by releasing some equity. Finally, my eye for putting together Ikea furnishings into some semblance of design may come in useful. As will my French A-level which has been languishing unused save for the odd trip to Corsica for well over a decade. We can rent it, the idea being it will pay for itself, and maybe a bit extra, to make up for the fact that I appear to be unemployable, where long, lazy summers in the mountains, with a swimming pool opposite, tree climbing, summer luge, hiking and mountain biking await, as well as a space for me to write – a tantalising possibility. Here, it feels, the kids can reclaim something of their childhood from the vice-like grip of technology, and perhaps with it the self-confidence that they are good, not just at “not cool stuff”, but cool stuff like skiing, snowboarding or swimming. That would be the life, and for now, I can dare to dream.

Read about our culinary exploits in Valberg on my food blog, 4 hungry tigers.