La Thuile, La Thuile

The increasingly popular resort of La Thuile in the Aosta Valley is able to offer its visitors a choice of old or new. There's the traditional ski village with a dozen small family hotels that has grown out of four old mining villages now merged in to one. Then there's the modern slope-side hotel and apartment block complex in the shape of the giant Planibel, only a decade or so old. Visitors choosing to stay in any part of La Thuile can enjoy the spectacular views which take in the Matterhorn, Monte Rosa and Mont Blanc. La Thuile's component parts are the old villages of Thovex, Arly, La Golette and the largest and central Entrèves. Planibel contains more than 500 guest beds in a four star hotel and apartments complex, modern leisure and après ski facilities (Including gym, swimming pool and discothèque) and is right next to the gondola car or quad chair that take you straight up to 2200 metres, as well as the nursery slopes - in a word 'convenient'. The ski area is one of less than a dozen in the world where you can ski across the border, and one of two where you can ski from Italy in to France, in this case in to La Rosière, above Bourg St Maurice. The terrain stretches to 150km (93 miles) and is served by 35 lifts, almost half of them chairs.