Cheap ski resorts in Europe that don't feel cheap

The quiet, high-value gateway to Les 3 Vallees: from the Maurienne village of Orelle a gondola lifts you to Cime Caron at 3200 m and the whole 600 km domain.

The value gateway into Les 3 Vallées, Les Menuires gives you the whole 600 km domain without the Courchevel price tag. Recent makeovers have softened its functional reputation.

A Belle Epoque spa town at 600 m that somehow became the cheap way into Les 3 Vallées, with the Olympe gondola hauling skiers from the high street straight up into Méribel. Brides-les-Bains will not pretend to be an Alpine postcard, the buildings are turn-of-the-century and the streetlamps are still cast iron. It is the rare place where you sleep in a thermal town and ski 600 km of piste from a single lift pass.

Ski to your door in any of four altitude villages, from 1600 to 2000 m. Les Arcs wrote the book on ski-in/ski-out, and the Vanoise Express cable car stitches it to La Plagne to form the giant Paradiski domain.

Ten villages, one Olympic bobsleigh track and a glacier at Bellecôte that holds snow into spring. La Plagne is the other half of Paradiski, and one of the surest family bets in the whole Tarentaise.

A sunny balcony village above the Rhône valley, Nendaz is the largest and best-value gateway to Switzerland's biggest ski domain, the 410 km 4 Vallées. The lifts climb to Mont-Fort at 3330 m, shared with Verbier.

A sunny Val Chisone village lift-linked up to Sestriere on the Via Lattea, Pragelato hosted the 2006 Olympic nordic events. The quiet, well-priced way into the 400 km Milky Way.

A lively Piedmontese village on the giant Via Lattea, Sauze d'Oulx is famous for its après scene and 400 km of sunny piste across the Italian-French border. Italian energy on a vast circuit.

When the rest of the Alps are still green, Tignes is already skiing. The Grande Motte glacier opens in late September, and the link to Val d'Isère gives it the longest dependable season in the range.

One of France's largest linked ski areas, Les Sybelles joins La Toussuire, Le Corbier and three other Maurienne villages over 310 km of piste. It is a big, sunny, good-value playground that flies under the radar.

Long banana-curved apartment blocks at 1,550 m, parked on a sunny shelf above the Maurienne, with 310 km of Les Sybelles pistes opening directly off the balconies. Le Corbier is unapologetically 1960s, a piece of pure French ski-resort modernism that hides one of the easiest big-domain ski holidays in the Alps. Bring the kids, forget the gondola queues, ski straight off the bed.

La Toussuire is a purpose-built 1960s village perched at 1,750 m in the Maurienne, a gateway into the Les Sybelles domain. The architecture is unapologetic concrete from the lift-it-and-pour era, but the snow at altitude holds and the ski-in/ski-out is as honest as it gets. Families come back year after year for the price-to-piste ratio.