Sue Lawley rediscovers the joys of skiing in the French Alps

I hadn\'t skied for ten years and my legs turned to jelly at the mere thought of returning to the slopes. But my daughter Harriet is a confident and elegant skier and needed a break as - still short on deep, uninterrupted sleep - she came to the end of her maternity leave with her first baby, eight-month-old Oliver. I\'m always up for the sleeping, if not for the skiing, so we girls decided to slope off to Val d\'Isere, a village in the French Alps that has become synonymous with the great white world of winter sports. On day one, Harriet took charge of the map and - joy of joys - it showed a large patch coloured green at the top the mountain. \'Ski tranquille,\' it said in large letters. This sounded like the ideal place for me to rediscover my ski legs. As we got out of the cable car, there was the familiar clatter of skis and poles and the sound of fibreglass on hardened snow as 50 eager people stepped into their bindings ready for the day\'s sport. With a pounding heart, I pushed forward gingerly, following my daughter to the top of a green run. Then off we went. This was harder than I remembered. As I began to skim out of control across the slope, I knew it was time to transfer my weight and turn. Next, I was traversing faster and faster across to the other side, where I could see a perilous drop. I plucked up the courage to turn again but it was all too fast and too difficult, and down I tumbled. I bashed my right elbow, went head over heels and ended in an ungainly heap, with one ski off and poles akimbo. Determined not to be beaten, I picked myself up and went again. And again I fell. This was a mistake. I had obviously lost any technique I once possessed. I thought that if I could only get to the bottom of the mountain in one piece, I would happily spend the rest of the holiday strolling around the village in my angora headband and smart new anorak, looking the part if not playing it. Then Harriet told me: \'Sorry Mum, I\'m afraid I misread the map. We\'ve just come down a red run.\' Red is the second most difficult run you can do - but rather than being cross, I felt pleased with my efforts. After that, tackling the quieter green and blue runs was a doddle. And after two vins chauds at lunchtime, I was even beginning to feel like a natural skier again. It was time to go home before I got too cocky. Home was Les Barmes de l\'Ours, or \'the caverns of the bear\' - a hotel which, mercifully, was a short walk from the slopes, and warm and welcoming. It was only half-built back in 2002 when the developer hit financial difficulties. In town at the time was Delphine Andre, a regular winter visitor to the resort. Heiress to her father\'s transport business, Madame Andre decided then and there to become a hotelier - and at the end of the following year she opened Les Barmes. The hotel now has 47 double rooms and 29 suites and features a different style on each floor - American, Scandinavian, contemporary and Alpine. Harriet and I were tucked away in a spacious Alpine eyrie and couldn\'t have been more comfortable or better looked after. Madame Andre has taken to the hotel business in a big way. She owns three more, at Montelimar, St Remy and Le Lavandou, all in the South of France. Day two was a white-out but Harriet and I decided to brave it anyway. I had remained upright for most of the previous day so surely I could do it again. Mind you, that was yesterday, when I could see the terrain beneath my skis. Despite wearing the most expensive light-attuned goggles on the market (a present from my husband), I was thrown off course by every tiny bump on the mountain. The miserable environment reminded me of foggy evenings in my Midlands childhood, when I would walk home from school barely able to see my hand in front of my face. This was an Alpine hell and I slipped and slid towards the cable car to ride home while Harriet braved the red run down the valley alone. It was a long way and tough on the legs but she made it. Waiting to take our skis from us at Les Barmes was Paolo, who runs the hotel shop. \'Enough,\' I cried. \'Take these great planks from my hands - I can\'t walk another step!\' But what does that sign say? Fifty per cent off handbags? \'Take us to them!\' I ordered, and we scurried into the shop like rats up a drainpipe. No self-respecting big hotel is without a spa these days and Les Barmes de l\'Ours is no exception. It occupies a labyrinth on the lower ground floor where, as well as the treatment rooms (some housing great orthopaedic-looking baths where your every pore can be cleansed, pummelled and purified), there\'s a hair salon, Jacuzzi, sauna, steam room and swimming pool with floorto-ceiling windows. It exudes wellbeing. Although you know a day on the slopes is good for your body, a day spent in the spa instead has huge attractions. After all, isn\'t the art of rejuvenation to do exactly what you want to do and not what you feel you ought to do? I lay down beneath the hands of the masseuse and told myself how sensible I was. I also decided that if I could afford it, I would have a massage at the end of each day on the slopes - just to stretch the muscles back into place. Harriet and I lay by the pool after our massage and floated into dream territory. Comparing notes later, it turned out that while Harriet had been worrying that Oliver was keeping down his lunch, I was deciding whether to buy six more handbags and solve all my Christmas present problems in one go. Ah, the luxury of being a grandparent! The spa at Les Barmes invites you on a \'journey out of time to get back in touch with your inner self\' - and it is an experience that reminds one of shopping at the greengrocer\'s. Creams are made of extracts of artichokes and tomato; there are \'fresh pumpkin cells\' on offer, and \'gooseberry cream\' which can \'stimulate your cellular clock\'. All that really matters, of course, is how you look on your return to a cold, wet Britain, so for our final evening Harriet and I booked the \'Sun, Soul, Self-Ritual\' - essentially an allover self-tanning treatment which also claimed to prevent premature ageing. Totting up our treatments at the end of the week, I calculated that I was back in my 30s and Harriet was once more a teenager. Another treat was a grand dinner in La Table de l\'Ours, the hotel\'s Michelin-starred restaurant. The no-nonsense side of me can get a little ruffled by temples of gastronomy, where sometimes the \'food as art\' thing can go way over the top. But here any prickly reservations melted away with alarming ease in front of foie gras in a pear and wild celery sauce, char from Lake Geneva served with polenta and a bouillabaisse, pork cooked for 38 hours with honey and lemon, local cheeses such as gruyere, and - to round it off - a pink poppingcandy lollipop that sparkled in the mouth. Art, perhaps: a damn good dinner, definitely. Giggling like schoolgirls, we fell into conversation with a couple at the next table. He was a dotcom millionaire, she a professional cake-maker. They had known each other for six months and were already planning their lives together. \'There is only one hotel in Val d\'Isere and you are in it,\' he told us. It was good to know we had made the right choice, and I was even more flattered when his girlfriend asked me for my autograph. Then she burst my bubble of wellbeing by telling me it was for her mother. The trials of the ageing TV performer can be difficult to bear. Tuesday night was firework night. The temperature outside was plummeting to minus 10C when we left the hotel at 7pm to watch the display. Strangely, it\'s by night that you appreciate best the perfect position that Val d\'Isere occupies in the heart of the Haute Savoie. The village sits 6,000ft above sea level at the centre of a bowl formed by giant mountains, with the Italian border to its north and east and the legendary Olympic downhill run, the Face de Bellevarde, rising steeply to the south-west. Today the whole area is known as Espace Killy, after France\'s triple Olympic champion Jean-Claude Killy. As we looked up that night, a giant snake of light - 150 ski instructors each carrying a burning torch - made its way steadily downhill. Sipping our mulled wine from plastic beakers, we had to acknowledge that, though this was a marketing ploy played out regularly through the season, it couldn\'t detract from the fact that skiing is an uplifting sport and a great example of man\'s attempt to conquer nature. We returned to the warmth of Les Barmes de l\'Ours in awe of both. On our last night, we raised a glass of champagne to ourselves and our week of unashamed self-indulgence. Harriet had notched up precious hours of quality sleep which would stand her in good stead as Ollie\'s teeth begin to poke through his gums. Back home, new father Ben had bonded even more strongly with his son, and my husband Hugh had at last learned how to operate the dishwasher, if not the washing machine. And Harriet and I - tanned, relaxed and a little fitter - had found a new basis for our relationship: mothers together, rather than just mother and daughter. I thought I knew most things about motherhood, but in the Alpine splendour of Val d\'Isere I learned a few more. Motherhood is for ever - even when you\'re a granny on a green run.