Chalet Ptarmigan

If you have noticed the beautiful new building on the main street, between the hotels Savoie and Kandahar, and thought what a fabulous place it would be to buy a flat, but then decided that £2m was possibly a bit much for a holiday home, you will be delighted to hear that YSE runs the whole third floor, with three magnificent apartments. Ptarmigan is one of them, with four bedrooms and four bathrooms (one with bath and shower, three with showers), and a sauna. For seven or eight guests there is nowhere better to stay in Val d’Isère…

The architect of this building is internationally renowned Michel Covarel, and true to form Chalet Ptarmigan is beautifully finished and fitted with lots of old wood and granite, but also every conceivable mod con.

Ptarmigan has been built around its spacious sitting-dining room, and has huge sliding windows onto a vast balcony. It faces south, and the views of the mountains across the roofs of the village are quite fantastic, as shown in our photos above. If you are bewildered by the picture of the dinner table, which seems to be in the middle of a château, with the cook working a few halls away, it is because the table is surrounded by mirrors, and the chalet girl was just behind the camera.

The bedrooms are beautiful, with parquet floors and lots of cupboards, good lighting and lovely bathrooms. All can have two good-sized single beds or one six-foot double (please specify which you prefer when booking).

Three of the bedrooms have windows affording views across the silent snow and trees of a garden, some rather attractive buildings, and the Dôme and Signal mountains.

The fourth has no window. Most people never open the window in the Alps in mid-winter, so the French can’t quite understand our obsession with having one. We, however, appreciate that a window is essential: if you can’t see the weather from your bed, what will you talk about while shaving?

So we sell this room to single travellers but it can be made up as a double or twin for two guests.

The location of Chalet Ptarmigan could scarcely be better. In the middle of the main street, a four-minute walk to the lifts and slopes, a few paces from all of the action, yet high enough above it all never to be disturbed (and in any case the soundproofing is eerily good). All three bedrooms with windows face the back of the building.