How a ski trip to France helped me find my winter travel mojo

With its tree-lined ski slopes and starlit forest hikes, the traditional village of Villard-de-Lans, near Grenoble, made me fall back in love with skiing holidays

‘Off-piste? You must be joking!” It was my first post-pandemic ski trip after a few years off the slopes, and I’m not a hugely confident skier at the best of times. I had been nervous before setting off, and unsure whether I could face the hassle of skiing holidays (the cold! the boots!) any more. Like lots of people, I’d lost my travel mojo. What was wrong with hibernating at home for the winter?

Then I arrived at Villard-de-Lans, a traditional village resort in the Vercors plateau in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France. The sun was shining, the pistes were quiet and a couple of easy warmup runs reminded me why I fell in love with skiing 25 years ago. Before long, I was swishing down gorgeous, tree-lined slopes backdropped by huge limestone crags. The resort connects two villages, Villard and Corrençon-en-Vercors, and is absurdly picturesque – a mix of forest runs winding between fir trees and powder fields with panoramic views of peaks and canyons. This year, a lack of snow has affected the resort – as with many places across Europe – but pistes have reopened this week.