Hotel Castor, Champoluc

Start your day well with a full buffet breakfast served between 7.30am and 10am. You'll have a wide selection pastries, cheeses, cereals and fruit to choose from and cooked breakfasts are available on request.

Dinner is taken in the authentic mountain style restaurant, complete with arch ceilings and original paintings and carvings by local artists. Enjoy a four-course meal antipasti and finishing on a high with a delicious home made dessert or help yourself to the cheese buffet. There's also an à la carte menu that you can choose from (payable locally).

There's a great atmosphere in the hotel's bar. It's in the historic part of the building dating back to the 1920's. Catch up on the days events with friends and family over a glass of wine, beer or cocktail.

Special diets are available on a request basis. Vegan meals are not available.

Apart from the first week in January, when half of Turin descends on Champoluc, this resort remains largely uncrowded. It's part of the Monterosa Ski area, in the Aosta Valley, with a combined total of around 200km of runs. Champoluc is a very Italian venue, with good food and après-ski, which revolves primarily around restaurants and bars. It's generally pretty quiet, with top scenery and largely intermediate skiing. There's some decent off-piste for better skiers, but you will have to cover large distances to get at all of the available tougher stuff.

Champoluc makes for an ideal family resort, but one recent visitor complained of less-than-satisfactory childcare. The ski school is good, but the lack of foreign languages spoken by instructors in Italy can be a slight stumbling block. Overall, Champoluc is very much an unspoilt resort, with lots of lift-linked skiing, best suited to intermediates.