By JOHN WESTBROOKE, Financial Times

SKI UPDATE HAND-CRAFTED: Have your luxury ski holiday tailor-made by Made to Measure: you get your own consultant from your first contact until you get home. The brochure contains 32 resorts, 29 in Europe accessible by rail or road; you specify the days, airlines, helicopter transfers, log fires or whatever you fancy.

FRENCH LEAVE: For everything you ever wanted to know about French skiing get the English-language Ski France guide, free from 09068-244123 (premium rate line) or at the French Travel Centre in Piccadilly, London, which has wine and cheese tastings all month. Or check out the web site: www.skifrance. fr TAKE A WALK: Take it easy on the snow this winter. Instead of skis, try a snow-shoe holiday with Exodus, walking the volcanoes of Iceland, the wolf country of the Apennines, the ice-covered lakes of Bulgaria, or even 4,400 metre-high Mount Elbert in the Colorado Rockies. Norway and Spain are among other destinations; shoes and walking poles are included in the packages, from Pounds 509 for eight days.

SKI FOR ALL: Smugglers` Notch, Vermont, which specialises in families and in teaching (and, it insists, in challenging terrain), has won another award for best family programmes in the US.

KIDS IN: Take a kid for 50 quid is the cry of Ski Independence this winter. The Pounds 50 price includes flights to the US or Canada, accommodation, transfers and lift pass.

SKI: You may be planning to spend Christmas on Sydney`s Bondi Beach, but you could always fit in a North American ski break on the way to Australia or back. Trailfinders has created a programme of stopovers in places from Banff to Heavenly.

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