What’s special about Saint-Martin-de-Belleville is that, despite being part of the biggest ski area in the world, it’s an unspoilt French mountain village. You’ve got cows and goats; there’s a church and a?town hall. Locals live here and there’s farming?in the summer. That’s quite unusual now, particularly in Les 3 Vallées, which has?become so commercial.?

We first visited because a friend of ours had bought a chalet here. She said, “Come look, you might love it.” And she was absolutely right. We’d been looking to buy a chalet in Méribel and various other places, but it was unspeakably expensive. Our absolute criterion was that we wanted to be able to ski?in and ski out – not get in a car, put all your kit in?and find that one child’s left a glove, blah blah. We’ve had Chalet Floralie for 16 years this year, and we also rent it out.

Les 3 Vallées has 600km of runs, not counting the massive amount of off-piste. Sixteen years on, I’ve hardly touched the sides. So it’s a very exciting place in terms of its possibilities. Saint-Martin has easy access to Val Thorens, which has some of the highest skiing in Europe – it goes up to 3,200m. Our chalet is maybe a two-minute walk to the bubble lift that takes you towards Méribel, and it’s about 40 minutes to get to Val Thorens on skis.

The Belleville Valley is, in my view, the prettiest of Les 3 Vallées because you have the sun all afternoon. My favourite run is Jérusalem, which is incredibly undulating and goes on for ages. We also do a lot of skinning, where you put skins – what would have been seal skins once, but are now synthetic – under your skis so you can walk up the mountain and?get to places nobody else can. Our wonderful guide at Elite Ski Team will call me in the morning and say what?gear I need to bring,?depending on the conditions. Then we’ll make our way somewhere off-piste with glorious powder and no people. I’m not very keen on skinning for more than two hours – it’s walking uphill! But we’ll stop at the top for a drink and some nuts maybe before putting our skis on and?enjoying wonderful fresh powder all the way down. Then you feel like you deserve your lunch.?

We often go to Chez Pépé Nicolas in Les Menuires when we’ve had a good ski off-piste – it serves very simple Savoyard food. Or we’ll ski to Courchevel, where there’s a?fantastic restaurant, Cave des Creux, in the middle of the piste. They have the best pudding table you’ve ever seen in your life: tarte aux framboises, tarte au citron meringuée, crème br?lée. And at the top of the mountain that joins Méribel and Saint-Martin, Maya Altitude has a fantastic terrace overlooking the Belleville Valley. Wherever you go, the plat du jour – some kind of casserole or blanquette de veau (veal stew) – is usually the best thing to go for, and the frites are delicious. I normally ask them to take the bread basket away or it’s a disaster.?

In Saint-Martin itself, Lodji hotel has a restaurant on the terrace that’s great for après-ski. It has concerts and a piano bar – and the best part is that it’s stumbling distance from home. Just outside the village is La Bouitte, an amazing restaurant with two Michelin stars to which a lot of people from Courchevel ski. (You used to be able to heli in, but I think they’ve stopped that now.) They source as much as they can from the Belleville Valley, and they’ve also got a spa. A?good massage is important when you’re skiing. I have a lovely woman called Zoe at Hero Massage, who comes to me.?

During spring and summer you can go walking, canyoning and mountain biking. You’ve got those electric bikes that make everything quite easy. There’s so much to do. But the funny thing about the Alps is that it doesn’t matter what time of year you go, they have Christmas trees all year round, lit up. Even at Easter. There’s something rather lovely about that.

Part of what I love about skiing is that we’re all so busy, but when you’re skiing, you’ve got to be completely focused on what you’re doing. I find that incredibly relaxing. There’s nothing that makes me feel better – the exercise, the sun… even the cold. The feeling of?coming home at the end of the day and having a quick snooze after a cup of tea. My kids have all skied since they were very small, so it’s something we do together as a family, which is just a joy. It doesn’t get better than that.?