The equivalent of a small Cotswold village set within a cat’s cradle of blue and red ski runs between hedonist Val Thoren and the high rise concrete of Les Menuires.

Like every good village it has a pub, one pub, Le Ferme. This is the way to it:

Pretty, huh?

It also has a pizzeria, a shop (stocking an array of dubiously humorous postcards and ones with barely dressed women on too) and a snow shop
(and weirdly I recently visited a village in the Yorkshire Dales that has a snow shop too, so this is not the preserve of the Alps).

And as sure as night follows day, like many small villages, everybody knows everybody. At the pub or on the piste you will know somebody, biblically (for some seasonnaires and guests) or in the straight forward, nodding hello way. But it doesn’t matter which, you must treat everything you say as though it can be heard. So, if in doubt don’t say it…wait until you are at the top of a mountain, alone, in a blizzard, only then is it safe to talk about who was in the hot tub last night, who is quaffing the chalet wine long after dinner, the room mates who aren’t getting along…

Or your small world could get a whole lot more claustrophobic.