La Joue Du Loup in the picturesque Devoluy Valley is not a high profile French glitzy resort and in fact, not many people have ever heard of it! Our apartment was an impulse off plan purchase, made after I visited a hillside in the summer with the estate agent and concluded the deal over a beer in the local village.

Luckily, for me, the finished article is built to an extremely high standard and quite arguably our 4 bed duplex apartment occupies one of the best positions in the resort, offering absolutely stunning views of the mountains and countryside from one side of the apartment and the ski slopes on the other side.

We normally drive to the ski slopes from the UK, but the TGV to Lyon and hire a car or flights to Grenoble, Lyon or Marseille are also good options which we have tried over the last few years.

Prior to kids we had been skiing a few times but not to any great standard. It is a great healthy outdoor sport which we thought we could all do together and we were determined to try and get our kids skiing from an early age.

However, I knew we had to choose somewhere where there was little effort to reach the slopes! Walking or taking a bus or car to the nearest slope was never going to be a good solution with three young skiers in tow.

Our apartment ensures effortless skiing door to door is possible. Take the lift down into the basement, collect the skies from locker and open the door on to the slopes!! It couldn’t be easier and how brilliant to ski down to the ski lift from right outside the door!

La Joue du Loup offers skiing for all levels and has a descent snowboard park. The ski school is great and the instructors speak both French and English. There are many different pistes and lifts covering a massive well managed and continually growing ski area. The snow record for this resort is consistently very good and being fairly south, it has the added benefit of skiing in the sun!

There is also a ski nursery for the beginners which my son went to and a ski crèche which my daughter tried when she was 3 yrs old – they went sledging! With all the kids happy and looked after during the mornings this gave us a great opportunity to go skiing together and stop off occasionally at one of the many mountain restaurants for some “vin chaud!” – honestly, we did do some skiing in the mornings.

We actually all skied back to the apartment for lunch most days and it was great to take time to have lunch together and watch the skiers coming down the hill!

In the afternoon, we could see how the kids had progressed following the ski lessons. To my amazement and annoyance in equal measures, after a few days they were not only better than me but also faster!!!

In the evenings we did try some of the local restaurants, which are exceptionally good and actually reasonably priced. There are a few supermarkets, some shops, a few bars, pizza take-aways and even a disco, if you still have the energy!

If you want to experience an authentic and reasonably priced French ski resort with all the amenities, then La Joue Du Loup is highly recommended. I am sure La Joue Du Loup will not remain a well kept secret for long!!

Our apartment is ideal for families and friends and just makes the whole skiing experience highly enjoyable!