How many times during the long winter months have I seen my other half smile and say: ‘It's raining! Know what that means?' I roll my eyes to this rhetorical question because what he means is that it's raining down on the coast but it's snowing in the mountains. This in turn means that at the crack of dawn on Saturday we all get suited and booted, are ‘treated' to a Maccy Dees breakfast on the way (oh joy!) and a drive through those nauseating roads to get cold, wet and tired blasting down slopes all day.

You wouldn't believe it but I love skiing yet I know I'm not alone...the post Christmas blues kick in, the weather is dull and grey and I'm fed up of kitting out my army of kids in ‘duvets' and mittens when all I want to do is lie on the beach!

Well now you can with greater ease than ever before. Emirates Airlines have, in the last couple of years, flown from Nice via Rome to Dubai but now they fly direct. In little over five hours, you can leave your partner in Isola and head to the luxury of a 5 star hotel overlooking the gulf and be pampered to your heart's content.

We headed to the Madinat Jumeirah (pronounced Medina) which is part of the Jumeirah group. This resort is, without doubt, an oasis of calm where everything and everyone is thought of. There are three hotels within the resort - the Mina Al Salaam, the Al Qsar and the Dar al Masyaf villas, where my skied-out family stayed. We've stayed in all three over the years and all are faultless but for me the villas are just that little bit more special.

Each villa consists of between six and eight rooms with your own butler at your beck and call 24/7. Each room, Moroccan in design, overlooks the waterways that meander through the resort and in the centre of each villa is a stunning courtyard with a fountain to enjoy free drinks each evening between 6-8pm. Outside is your own private pool with your very own life guard so the kids can enjoy maximum freedom whilst you enjoy the happy hour.

And it gets better. If you can tear yourself away from your villa to sample the restaurants and other amazing facilities, you get whisked to the main resort by dhow (a traditional Arabian wooden boat.) Here you will not only find a myriad of restaurants along the waterway creating a village feel but also a souk designed in a traditional Moroccan style with everything from high end clothing stores to souvenir stands.

While you shop, the kids are entertained in the Sinbad kids club which takes children from four years old and has everything from waterslides and fun pools to PlayStations and face painting. It's not a dingy room at the back of the resort like many kids clubs I've seen but a great feature with top class childcare and more lifeguards than children. What more could you want?

Well, maybe one of the best water parks in the world, Wild Wadi, included in the price of your stay. A family ticket to Wild Wadi normally costs around £130 so this really is a great benefit and you can go as many times as you like during your stay. It's so high tech that you don't even have to climb any steps to get on the tube rides - you merely sit in your inflatable tube at the bottom of the flume and thousand of gallons of water are blasted beneath you to push you up the hill so you can then be hurtled downwards through flumes and tunnels. How decadent and a hell of a lot less effort than getting to the top of that ski slope. Except I opted out to visit the resort spa for an 80 minute massage instead - perfect!

If you're missing the Alps, head to the Mall of the Emirates where they have created the world's third largest indoor ski slope, measuring 400 metres and using 6000 tons of real snow. Here you can hire everything including ski suits so just turn up in your flip flops and shorts and be transformed into a ski bum.

There is also a snow park with toboggan runs and tube rides so there really is something for everyone. Except while hubby went skiing, I went shopping in Harvey Nichols and everyone was happy!

‘Claire Warner is married to Paul, a British Airways pilot, and lives in Biot. A teacher and a mum of three, Claire is addicted to travel and there aren't many places on the planet she hasn't yet visited!'