Life as a guest in a luxury chalet should come with a warning on the tin “clients beware, you will quickly lose the ability to fend for yourselves”. In such a pampered environment where you rarely have to lift a finger, you can veer towards total loss of the instinct for survival. On a visit to Morzine on the French/Swiss Border, a stay at a luxury chalet with in house staff was a real break away from the norm. When you rise in the morning fresh croissants are on the table, the breakfast room is awash with the smell of coffee, and a friendly “chalet host” (the days of “chalet girls” are gone) is on hand to ask if you’d care for French toast. Like any up-market hotel maybe, except that you have probably just dragged yourself out of bed and a couple of feet to the table looking like you might shortly dive back under the duvet. The problem is that the spectacular views of the valley through the floor to ceiling windows flanking the breakfast table pose some serious competition against any duvet diving temptation. It’s probably the only dilemma in what is a far from taxing day ahead.

Apart from all the obvious upsides to being pampered and tended to, there’s also the advantage that your energy is conserved for the later venture outdoors. If you choose to go high into the mountains and face downwards on a very steep bicycle track, you’ll have stored up enough kilojoules to aid a precarious descent.

The village sits in the Dranse valley in the eastern part of France and the heart of the Portes du Soleil, which straddles the French and Swiss Alps. There are 14 resorts in the Portes du Soleil area, all under the shadow of the spectacular Mont Blanc (over which you can take a helicopter) and within reach of the shores of Lake Geneva. But here’s the twist - with 8 of the resorts lying within French territory and the remaining 6 on Swiss soil, you get a really curious hybrid of cultures.

On this border you get a glimpse of the virtue of Heidi mixed with the humour of Astérix, the sincerity of the Swiss tapered by good old-fashioned Gallic realism. There is a touch of wealth and plenty of diligence – the orderliness of the Swiss has never been in question, all ducks neatly in a row - but in Morzine the perfectionism is moderated by the originality of the French.

In winter the Portes du Soleil is known as one of the largest linked ski resorts in Europe, but it receives even more visitors during the summer months. Heading into the summer season, there are hundreds of kilometres of marked footpaths, ranging from relaxing walks to more strenuous mountain hiking. In 2004 the area hosted the world mountain biking championships, and every four years the Tour de France comes through Morzine. Many of the mountain lifts are open 24 hours so that access to the higher mountain terrain is unrestricted.

Straddling a border presents its own peculiarities. A word of advice - don’t take your mobile phone up the mountains; crisscrossing from one territory to the other the bombardment of text messages from Swiss and French mobile companies welcoming you to their networks will leave you addled. Somehow, it doesn’t quite fit with the idea of feeling at one with nature.

There is a friendliness found only in the more rural parts of Europe, tinged with the kind of reserve possessed by a people assured of their own attractions. It’s significantly different from the central and southern parts of France, where damp fields and lush vineyards stretch for miles; here in the Alps the air is dry and cool, even in summer, but there’s enough sunshine to keep hardened sun worshippers in a more than positive mood.

Biking down a narrow track at a very steep angle seems like an extreme option, but once you pile your wheels into the cable car and way up the mountain, you do have to come down some way. Adventurous bikers choose the free ride tracks – most of which would raise the hair on the back of any head. But there are also possibilities involving less gradient and more time to take in the scenery. Our holiday group included some who were eager to move their muscles but were looking for a choice on even ground – so the road cycling and cross-country tracks kept them off the mountains while still in view of what the valley has to offer.

Frenzied activity is not essential and long leisurely lunches in the mountain taverns where the taste of the rich pastureland makes its way to the plate are just as commendable. Everyone knows that the French are somewhere left of centre when it comes to what they will and will not eat. They leave insects, dogs, cats and monkeys to nations further east, but snails, frogs and horses are considered to be fair game. Locals won’t even consider tucking into a good meal at lunch without a carafe of a fruity red wine to wash it down, so it didn’t seem reasonable to us as visitors that we should hesitate either. This is the home of the fondue – a standard item on any of the restaurants’ menus. The fondue savoyarde takes you right back to 1970’s Ireland, when Tupperware parties and fondues were a national pastime. But in Morzine you get the genuine thing, and thankfully there’s no Tupperware involved. The cheese is almost fresh from the churn when it arrives on the table, and then it’s time to dunk in at length. There’s also the longeole – a pork sausage flavoured with fennel seeds, popular with local chefs. There’s lots of fish on the local menus but the idea of tackling a bowl of mussels in a mountain village didn’t seem right - it would have been more indigenous to chew on a tough but tasty piece of goat meat.

Locals are proud of the village and of maintaining its traditions, both architecturally and in the way they like to spend their days. The first thing that strikes you is that it’s not a purpose built resort, which gives it a nice feel compared to some of the other popular mountain destinations in Europe. Despite the medley of international visitors to the region, you’re expected to at least attempt to speak French. The exception to this is with your hiking and biking guides, all of whom speak English with a degree of fluency and a range of accents and intonations deserving of an orchestral award.

Whether you’ve gone for the adrenaline filled day on a mountain bike or a slow meander from late lunch to early afternoon tea in one of the local patisseries, you shouldn’t skip the “back at the chalet” attractions. The onset of evening brings indulgent detoxification in the sauna before a slow crawl into the outdoor hot tub. Known as ‘The Hollywood of Morzine’, the spot we stayed in on the outskirts of the village has a bird’s eye view of the rest of the valley - a natural home for a hot tub. In the event that there are children bent on disturbing adult down time, they can be encouraged towards the games room at the back of the house, where they’ll be contained as well as entertained for hours at a time.

As experiences go, having an in house chef is one close to top of the list. In the same way as you drag yourself two feet to a fully prepared breakfast, you don’t have to argue over which restaurant to go to at night time – total suspension of decision making requirements. It was a miracle that we made it to the village some nights, with so much temptation towards inertia, but there was a pull factor in the Buddha Bar where the beer is delivered to the table in a minature draught contraption. ‘Shots’ are also in vogue around here (not very Buddhist, but it’s encouraged by the locals) and the Gentian and Genepi slid down gracefully as nightcaps.

Arriving back on home soil, we were greeted with a soft damp rain that you just don’t get at high mountain altitudes, and the stark realization that there was nobody at home in the kitchen preparing a gourmet dinner for our return.

 This article was published in Business and Finance Magazine in 2008.