Can you learn to ski in middle age? Of course you can, as I discovered as part of a fantastic road trip we were invited on by Ford, which consisted of driving a very nice new Ford Kuga (a  rather fetching Ginger Ale one) from Lingfield Park in Surrey to the ski resort of Courmayeur in Italy via France’s champagne region and the impressive city of Reims.

Let me be clear, during our one day on the slopes I couldn’t ski for toffee, but Paul took to it like a duck to water, quickly incurring our young instructor’s wrath by skiing too far, too fast. His defence was that he wasn’t exactly in control of the situation, but I have to defend the irate Barbara: being on the slopes with him was like being in an episode of the ‘Tomorrow People’ or ‘Star Trek’: one second he’d be in one place, namely the top of the slope, the next somewhere else entirely, namely the bottom of it.

I meanwhile was snowploughing down the same slope inch by painful inch, occasionally straightening my aching legs only to bomb down terrifying stretches before ending up in a hysterical heap at the bottom. I had huge fun despite being clearly not built for skiing, and am sure that given a decade or so of practice and patience, I too could be jaunting down the piste. But for now, I’m sticking to Alpine walking.

You can read about the Courmayeur road trip on the Time Out website.