Frozen in time

Here I am, Claudia Cardinal in The Pink Panther. Or maybe I’m Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I haven’t been transported back to the ‘60s. I don’t have white, bug-eyed goggles and a mink hat. I’m not wearing a snowflake sweater, stirrup pants and lace-up leather boots. But otherwise the world looks much as it would have done in the golden era of downhill skiing, before the advent of snow machines and package tours.

The slopes are sparsely populated and lined with fir trees – unlike the “motorways” that make up the average modern resort. Every so often we stop at a wooden chalet restaurant dug into the side of a mountain to join the skiers eating lunch on the terrace, or to lounge in striped deckchairs in the snow, sipping prosecco. When you are on a 21st-century skiing holiday you normally feel exhilarated – alive – but rarely peaceful. Here, the scenery is uninterrupted by snow cats, stag parties in novelty hats or tannoys blaring techno-pop – that full-colour-with-CGI experience. I feel like I’m skiing in a black-and-white film, and that any moment I’ll be overtaken by David Niven or 007. All that’s missing is the Burt Bacharach soundtrack.

The closest I’d come to skiing in black-and-white was a few years ago, when my boyfriend whisked me off to Cortina in the Italian Tyrol, where the clock appears to have stopped 1962. There was the hotel with crooning pianist and black-tied barman; there were mountain restaurants with log fires and cyclamen in the window boxes. When my boyfriend stepped out of his skis to propose to me I realised Cortina had been a one-off romantic escape. I would soon be a stepmonster to three teenage children with a passion for speed and fast food and absolutely no nostalgic craving. There would have to be compromise from this point on.

Or so I thought. Then, last season, I discovered, 28kn northwest of Cortina, another charming snow-dome world, separate from package hordes, but without the rich, rare atmosphere of Cortina. The area, Alta Badia, is two-and-a-half hours’ drive from Venice, but isolated enough for the locals to speak their own language, Ladin. The resort (although that seems too beefy a word to describe it) is San Cassiano (population 900); and the hotel is the Rosa Alpina; the hotel in the region, not least because of its two-star Michelin restaurant.

At San Cassiano, I realised, the whole family would enjoy skiing in black-and-white: it has the charm and glamour of Cortina, minus the septuagenarians in diamonds and fur. We had been assured that the hotel – which has been owned by the same family for three generations – was short on pretentions, long on old-fashioned Alpine charm, and a five-minute shuttle ride from the main San Cassiano lift. “It’s exactly what you want,” said my advisor. “The place is straight out of early James Bond. The kids will love it.”

We arrived in the afternoon and stepped from the red-carpeted pavement into a cosy hotel lobby with a log fire. The red carpet was a little alarming, but we needn’t have worried. The Rosa Alpina looked as if it had been done up by Ralph Lauren’s rustic mountain-dwelling cousin, which is to say it manages an atmosphere of Tyrolean simplicity in spite of a thick cushion of film-star luxury. Everything is comfortable but chic, without tipping over into this self-conscious, too-white territory that makes all parents feel on edge. Bedrooms are part Heidi (window shutters with carved hearts), part modern country-house (elongated armchairs upholstered in white, orchids, walk-in wardrobe fit for the Beckhams). The pool looks like a living room of a celebrated director hideaway, with snowy views and white daybeds, and the main restaurant is similarly LA meets Milan, with pony skin banquettes and a roaring pizza oven.

On any other ski holiday you would arrive, dash down to the hire shop and fit into a couple of runs before the lift closes – but this is skiing in black-and-white, remember, so everything is a little more leisure and civilised, plus you avoid any unglamorous aspects of the process. We were booked in for six days of stress-free skiing, in the guaranteed sunshine of late March, but little did we know just how effortless it would be. Here, skis and boots are ordered at reception, a la carte (will that be Rossignol for madame, how sharp would you like your edges?) and delivered and fitted at your convenience. Ski passes, too, are summoned. Maps are provided. Instructors. Even doctors come direct to your room (somehow we had an ingrowing-toenail crises to sort out). Already my stepchildren were seeing the advantages of black-and-white skiing and we hadn’t even hit the slopes yet. Dinner – in the upmarket restaurants where adults can sip cocktails while the family tuck in to pizza smothered in fresh mozzarella and bresaola – also had them seduced. By bedtime on the first night, nobody had even thought to mention the telephone box-sized internet room.

The following morning we discovered that the real luxury of this place (apart from pancakes at breakfast) is its setting. Admittedly there is not a lot to San Cassiano itself: a peppermint cake of a church, a tiny cake shop and a couple of restaurants serving pizza and pasta. Après-ski entertainment is the ivory tinkler at the Rosa Alpina, with a backing track. Think George Clooney incognito rather than Price Harry and hooray hooligans on a break from Boujis. But you come to this corner of the Dolomites in order to hear church bells, not Mika. And the mountains are something else – as pretty as they are dramatic, and surprising colourful. They change character all day, from glittering blue-white to fiery red at sunset and, finally violet as darkness falls. There is a name for this phenomenon – caused by the chemical composition of the rock – but to most of us it’s simply Dolomite magic.

At 1,537m, San Cassiano is not super-high, and the runs – mostly gentle blue with smattering of red and not much in the way of black – are family-friendly. The slopes are relatively peaceful and geared to those, like me, who like to take in the view, work on their style a bit, stop for a hot chocolate, and then settle down for a long, leisurely five-star lunch.

You don’t even know how good these lunches can be until you’ve skied in black-and-white. Before I discovered this section of the Dolomites I assumed that self-service sausage and chips in one of those concrete pit stops was as good as it gets in the mountains. But on those these slopes there are hidden log-cabin restaurants, some no bigger than the average bathroom, where you eat home made pasta at tables decorated with fresh flowers, served by waiters in leather aprons. Or stretch out in a deckchair, boots loosened, sunglasses off, bottle of prosecco chilling in the snow.

The Italians know better than anyone how to rustle up excellent food up 2,000m. Three days into the trip, we had our routine sorted: four runs, pause for hot chocolate stop, another five or six and break for lunch, and we’d worked out that there was no need to plan a particular route to end up at a particular place, because all of them were exceptional. The Plan Boe Hutte was among our favourites, but we never managed a second visit. Somewhere en route we’d glimpse a terrace jutting out of the rock and closer investigation would reveal another gem, with snowshoes on the walls, gingham curtains at the windows, a fire in the grate and a chef tossing spaghetti with wild mushroom and herbs. Most mountain restaurants don’t have menus, just whatever the kitchen is preparing, and the food is among the best you’ll eat anywhere.

The Rosa Alpina’s two-Michelin-starred restaurant, St Hubertus, draws in punters from as far as Florence and Milan to sample such delicacies as foie gras served on crème brulee and risotto with pine needles. But it is an oasis of tight-jawed pretension and we preferred Grill Stube l’Fana, five minutes down the road in La Villa, a timbered, candlelit snuggery where you can eat slabs of dripping meat served straight from the grill on wooden boards.

The clever thing about the right kind of old-school sophistication is that it is as intoxicating for kids as it is for us. Smart and stuffy doesn’t cut it, but a small hotel that’s informal, and at the same time feels like somewhere you could conceivably bump into Tom Cruise – in a small resort that might not be the hottest in Europe, but has to be one of the most charming – brings out the best in everyone. For bridging the gap between the second honeymoon and the trip to Alton Towers, you couldn’t do better.

Travel Brief

GO PACKED
Original Travel (020 7978 7333, www.originaltravel.co.uk) has seven nights at Rosa Alpina from £1,920pp, B&B, including flights to Venice, car hire and six-day ski pass)