‘You’re doing what?’ ‘We’re going to les Arcs with the kids for Easter. We’re doing it on the cheap, you know, driving down, self catering.’ People looked at me kindly as if I had gone slightly soft in the head.

By the time we set off, 6am on Good Friday, I was struggling to remember why it had seemed like a good idea. My husband and I both love skiing. We hadn’t gone this year. We have three children and could deposit the smallest with granny leaving us with the bigger two, aged five and three. Our problems were three-fold. Easter was very late so we needed to go somewhere high to guarantee snow; my husband is a lunatic skier and would not be happy with the small family valley with a handful of blues and easy reds; we couldn’t afford the top end option and I was being spoilt and didn’t want to stay somewhere cheap and cheerful a mile from the nearest lift.

Arc 1950, the new development being built by the Canadian giants Intrawest (responsible for Tremblant and Whistler in North America), promised height, challenging skiing and deluxe apartments a world away from the shoeboxes my mother had suffered when we were kids. £903 a week for an apartment sleeping six (we were meeting some friends from Italy out there) over Easter seemed do-able.

Our Eurostar return was an additional £20 to the cost of the apartment. I found it sick making and claustrophic but we were in Beaune (heart of Burgundy) by tea time. We had booked a family room in an unexciting hotel in the centre of town. With hardly any tourists around, we marched the children round the ramparts, allowed them Oranginas in the stunning medieval square and then gorged on snails and too much Cotes de Beaune as our exhausted kids fell asleep in their ice cream. The following morning was market day and we enjoyed our independent traveller status as we filled the back of the car with local cheese, saucisson and wine.

We reached les Arcs early afternoon. A series of loosely connected villages, each is more hideous than the last. In a gap on the mountain, just below the highest point, Intrawest is building a new village. The first two residences were opened for the 2003/4 season; another will be ready for this season; two more in 2005/6 and the project will be completed in 2007. If the rest of the resort is a concrete jungle, Arc 1950 has bent over backwards to be super-Savoyard and pretty. Of course it is contrived and artificial but it has been done with American attention to detail and not a little Gallic flair.

Our apartment was fantastic. Arranged over two floors with attractive fabrics, an en suite bathroom for us, a big open log fire in the sitting room and a double balcony looking down directly onto the piste. Ski in – ski out this definitely was. Best of all, given that is was mid-April, there was loads of snow.

We sorted out skis, passes etc that afternoon in the ski shop below the apartment. This is an extra however you are doing it and in popular resorts can cost upwards of £200 per person. In the Paradiski area (of which les Arcs and la Plagne are part) children under 6 go free - for most of the rest of Europe you pay from age 5. Our hidden costs appeared the following morning. At 3 and 5 we figured they were too small for ski school and so had booked a charming Scottish instructor for our offspring. The 5 year old was snow plough literate almost immediately but as I skied down past the nursery slopes a little blue bundle was having a ‘no this is not fun AT ALL’ meltdown. Oh where was the Scott Dunn nanny to whisk her away? I checked out the public nursery in Arc 2000 but it looked too grim. One is opening in 1950 for the 2005/6 season. The complex can provide local girls to babysit but in the end my daughter’s competitive edge took over and on day 3 when her brother skied down to meet us for lunch she announced that she wanted to do it after all.

I didn’t ski as much as I would have done had we had 9-5 childcare but it didn’t bother me - we had longer lunches; I went up to the supermarket in Arc 2000 to choose supper with the kids; we went swimming together (there is a small outdoor pool in the complex); I watched them tobogganing. Altogether a slower but no less enjoyable holiday. Dinner was in our apartment, helped by what we had bought in Beaune (the supermarket in Arc 2000 is adequate but quite expensive) and followed intensive bridge contests with our friend’s 10 year old son. We didn’t go clubbing and we woke up with clear heads.

The majority of the apartments in Arc 1950 operate on a buy to let basis. You buy the property and then immediately let it back to the service company who arrange maintenance and sub-letting. You get either two or seven weeks skiing a year (depending on which scheme you are on) and can become a member of the Intrawest club so can swap in to apartments that you know will be of a similar standard in North America. Provided you keep the property for at least 10 years, you can take advantage of certain tax exemptions.

Apartments costs between 6000 and 6500 euros per square foot. An apartment sleeping six will set you back about £220,000 - but with a steady income stream from a resort that looks set to become a hit, plus your skiing sorted for the next 10 years it is not hard to see why they have been a success. The first four residences (of which only two are completed) have completely sold out. The final ‘address’ will be available next spring - those with City bonuses to spare should take note: you need to act quickly!

The Turner family travelled with Erna Low who represent Arc 1950 in the UK, tel 0870 750 6820. They also have a number of other self catering options in other resorts in Europe and North America.