Family-friendly skiing in Orcières, France At 1,850 metres Orcières is at the end of the road. It's purpose built - mostly of rather tired brutalist concrete - and not much to look at. But the flip side is that the altitude pretty much guarantees good snow throughout the season. The Belambra is rather more elegant than most of the other buildings, though still a tower block. But everything you need is there. It is a one-stop shop, five minutes from the centre of town. No sooner have you dumped your suitcases in your apartment - cosy with a sitting-room/bedroom/kitchenette for the grown ups, and a bunk-bed room for children - than you can be down in the basement having your skis and boots fitted (no traipsing back from a ski-hire shop with grumbling, tired children). At ground level is a bar with pool table and entertainment room for children (on various nights a cinema for cartoons and a disco), nurseries for non-skiing children during the day, and, one storey up, a large dining-room with an all-you-can-eat buffet. As you sit there, wolfing down the calories, the sun dies over the mountain, painting the peaks pleasing shades of orange and pink. From our apartment's living-room window we had a panoramic and uninterrupted view up the mountain. The hotel is ski-in, ski-out, opening directly from the boot room onto the nursery slopes. A short 100m descent and the children were at the starting point for their first lesson with the local ecole de ski. That 100m was torture on the first morning (tears, tantrums, children saying that skiing was the worst thing ever), but thereafter fine enough. Lessons for the children ran from 9.30am to midday and, with a little help from their parents (OK, my wife) on their first afternoon, they were up and running by the second morning, wrangling the button lift on the nursery slopes and chaotically snow-ploughing to the bottom. The fact that most of their lessons were conducted in French irritated them a bit ("Why do they all speak French?" "Because it's France, my love"), didn't turn out to be a long-term problem. The art of watch and learn proved to be all that was needed. Unlike many resorts where the nursery slopes tend just to be at the bottom of the pistes, Orcières has a nursery ski area higher up, reached by bubble lift, meaning children enjoy a variety of slopes and get to experience the full beauty of the mountains. By the end of the week, the beginners" class was snow-ploughing down the red slope from the very top station, down onto blues and finally into town. The fact that they were skiing the same routes as their parents was a matter of considerable pride to them. Job done, then. The children can ski, and want to go back. But what of their parents" experience? My wife and I are reasonable intermediate skiers and there were enough blue and red slopes to keep us busy. The blue runs tend to be narrow schusses, the red runs wider and more amenable to developing technique. There are some black runs - one of which we negotiated, pumping the air, high on adrenalin at the bottom, but if you are a proper black-run junkie this is not the place for you. When we went in early April, out of French school holidays, the slopes were joyously empty, often we were skiing virgin snow with almost nobody else around, but it gets very busy, I was told, during French ski season in February. The mountain restaurants are fine for a hot chocolate or vin chaud, but not gastronomic destinations by a long chalk - a dodgy frankfurter at one cost me a day on the slopes. It's liberating to be somewhere devoid of loud Brits, but you do need to be able to speak French to a reasonable standard to get by - you can't rely on anyone apart from the ski teachers to understand English. And whatever romantic thoughts you might have about French cuisine will not be encouraged by the food at Belambra, which is functional if repetitive as the week goes on and leftovers are recycled into various curious stews (avoid the pike). There's always pasta on offer, though, so the children did fine. A short walk away there's a big swimming pool with waterslides (make sure you have the right kind of swimming trunks, though: tight Seventies-style Speedos will do, but not my fashionably middle-class Boden swimming shorts for which I was banned - it's a weird health and safety thing in France). Nearby is a fun toboggan run for children and a mini merry-go-round which is about as far as après-ski entertainment goes. The one downside is actually getting there. Because there are no package tours to Orcières, you need to book your flights carefully to make sure you don't miss the bus from Grenoble to the resort. It goes once daily and whatever health and safety issues the French have about swimming trunks does not apply to driving. It's nearly a four-hour transfer and so cavalier on the mountain bends was the driver that I made my peace with God. My son, at a more visceral level, made his peace with a number of sick bags I'd purloined from the aeroplane (if we went again we'd drive ourselves). But we got there, and back, just about - albeit in a very French way. Prices at Le Roc Blanc (belambra.co.uk) start at £1,770 for seven nights, based on a family of four sharing an apartment, half board, including ski hire and lift passes EasyJet flies to Grenoble from Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted. Flight prices start from £32.49 per person one-way (easyJet.com) Ski lessons can be booked through the Ecole de Ski (esi-orcieres.com) and cost from €110/£90 per person for six two-and-a-half-hour morning sessions. A return bus transfer (€52/£43 per adult, €42/£35 a child) from Grenoble-Isère airport can be booked through orcieres.com, or call 00 33 4 92 55 89 70 Val d'Anniviers: a secret valley on the verge of stardom Ski chalets with amazing spas Ski resorts: reader's tips The 15 cutest villages in ski resorts Italy and Austria 'best for budget skiing' The world's biggest ski resorts The best ski resorts for powder