What if you can't ski?

Paragliding, snow-shoeing, igloo-building ... how does anyone have time for skiing when there's so much more to do in the snow, asks avowed pistephobe Dixe Wills

The sun is starting to shine again in Bahrain and it won't be long before some of us will be rushing from an air-conditioned apartment, into an air-conditioned car before stepping into our air-conditioned office. With those thoughts in mind it was just right for a week of ski-related shenanigans.

It's unfortunate, then, that I am not a skier, and have no interest whatsoever in learning. After all, if we had been born to ski, we'd have given indestructible knees and free winter sports insurance.

But that, of course, leaves me at an impasse, for the Ski Train is evidently far too good to leave to skiers. The solution? A week in the Alps non-skiing.

To find out whether such a thing were indeed possible, I headed to La Rosiere, a snow-sure resort in France's Haute-Tarentaise just a hop away from Bourg St Maurice.

Imagine the village Heidi lived in, turn the tweeness down a notch or two, and you've got La Rosiere. Pluckily hanging on to the side of the mountain, the chalet-filled resort is reputed to be blessed with more snow than anywhere else in the Savoie region.

Being a rare south-facer, it's also one of the sunniest spots in the European Alps, which means that the living room at Snow Crazy's extensive Chalet Chantelauze, where we spent the week, becomes gloriously drenched in sunshine whenever the snow clouds depart.

Outside, a hot tub on the terrace offers some of the most remarkable views you're ever likely to encounter while being lit from below and cradled by warm bubbles.

The icing on the cake was that our friendly chalet hosts, Claire and Keith, were entirely unfazed by the revelation that I inhabit a misty region somewhere between vegetarian and vegan. In an ideal world, their recipe for egg-free banana cake would be the stuff of an entire documentary series. Happily ensconced, we kicked the week off with a raquette walk, the first of a whole slew of activities chalet owner Laura had booked for us.

Our guide was Xavier, a man who has recently become a very minor celebrity in France after one of his raquette walks was televised.

When we reached Xavier's chalet - a former shepherd's hut he rebuilt himself - we began to suspect he had a good sense of humour.

My heart was certainly beating a little faster the next day as I watched Ben, the pilot who was about to take me on a tandem paragliding flight, enjoy what appeared to be the final smoke of the condemned man.

His colleague assured me that it was "just to test the direction of the wind" but, as a slightly nervous paragliding virgin, I remained sceptical. "It's relatively straightforward," said Ben finally. "We run slowly down the hill then very, very fast and then we take off."

Sitting hundreds of feet above the ground in a world noiseless but for the wind in the canopy above, was an extraordinary feeling.

I would happily have spent hours up there, riding the thermals and lording it over the toy cars snaking their way down the mountainside. When Ben allowed me to have a go at flying the paraglider I came to understand why people who do this sort of thing become so obsessed with it. Who needs to join the cast of some action movie? This is the superpower gift of flight for real.

After we landed, I asked Ben how old he was on his maiden flight. "Thirteen," he replied, matter-of-factly. "And how old were you when you first went solo?" "Thirteen." Mountain people - they're a different breed all right.

Furthermore, they know how to build a half-decent igloo. Gregory, a man who could earn a living as Jude Law's double, took a motley assortment of mothers, small children and me into the woods. By the end of the afternoon we were proudly posing for photographs by our very own ice home-from-home.

Basically, there were three things to remember: firstly, the opening should face south; secondly, you must make the walls windproof; and thirdly, the proper plural of igloo is iglooit. This last fact will impress your friends.

I had saved a solo assault on La Rosiere's mountaintop fort until my last day, the very first on which we'd had any wind.

However, in the true spirit of the late Sir Edmund Hillary, I grimly boarded one of two local chairlifts open to pedestrians. It took me about half way and left me staggering upwards in the face of lashings of powdery snow and regrets that I had omitted to bring my goggles.

All the while, smugly begoggled skiers zipped past me, no doubt imagining I had lost either my skis or my marbles. The fort was well worth it, however, since it commands the Petit St Bernard pass, as used by Hannibal and his elephants en route from Spain to Rome.

It was largely destroyed during World War II but still cuts a dramatic figure among the peaks and provides a fantastic viewpoint from which to gaze upon Mont Blanc.

For the rest of the holiday, the whirl of activities left me no time to sample La Rosiere's swimming pool and spa, 10-pin bowling, assault course, or skating rink.

However, by the time the Ski Train wafted me homewards I counted myself a paraglider, a raqueteer, an igloo-maker, a husky-sledder, a Nordic walker, an expert on the Roman influences on Haute-Tarentaise architecture, and a connoisseur of the delights of apres non-ski, which is much like apres ski but with mercifully less talk of powder depths and piste maps. With so much to do here, I'm amazed anyone has time to ski.