Kranjska Gora

Set in Slovenia’s Julian Alps, Kranjska Gora is a small and beautiful resort that’s perfect for younger families and for beginners to build confidence. Everything in the area is geared towards making your first ski experience as enjoyable as you always imagined – and it's excellent value too.

There’s a top-notch ski school that specialises in developing students’ abilities, so you’ll be in safe hands as you master the basics. If you’ve progressed past the nursery slopes, there are some challenging pistes to get stuck into – including a black run used for the FIS World Cup races.

A great resort for beginners, with gentle nursery slopes conveniently situated close to the village and most hotels. There are gentle blues all over the mountain for building confidence in between ski school lessons, which are taught by friendly, English-speaking instructors.

Intermediates will gain maximum advantage from the wide variety of runs on the Vitranc mountain, not only because of the diversity of terrain, but also because of the fantastic descent on the tree-lined pistes.

Experienced skiers should immediately head for the challenging black pistes of the Podkoren mountain, where they will also have the opportunity to tackle the World Cup slalom run.

If you like a bit of variety, then the cross-country routes in Kranjska Gora are perfect. For beginners, easy tracks can be found along the flatland by the Slovenian-Italian boarder. Advanced skiers should head towards Planica and down into the lovely Tamar Valley for more physically demanding trails. If you want more of an endurance challenge, then there's a 40km, carefully-maintained trail from the centre of Kranjska Gora past the Spring of the Sava Dolinka River and Planica ski jumps, on into the Tamar Valley and in Gozd Martuljek.

Kranjska Gora is a picture-book village and sits just a few miles from both the Austrian and Italian borders. There’s some vibrant après ski in the village – but if you prefer to keep things low key then there’s plenty of quiet places to relax.

This family-friendly resort has some fantastic places to stay, providing high standards of accommodation and service, mostly at very good value.