Gstaad. The resort that has spent a century declining to show off.

Gstaad is a village in the Saanenland, the upper valley of the Saane in the Bernese Oberland, and the name is used loosely for a holiday region rather than a single resort. Saanen is the larger and older settlement a couple of kilometres away, with the airfield on the flat ground beside it. Schonried and Saanenmoser sit higher up on the road towards the Simmental, Gsteig and Lauenen are at the ends of their own side valleys, and Rougemont, a few minutes west, is already in French-speaking Vaud.

The skiing is spread across that geography rather than concentrated above one lift station, which is the first thing to understand about the place. There is no single base you can be dropped at. Where you stay decides which sector you use and how far the car goes each morning, and a chalet at Schonried is a different daily rhythm from a hotel on the Promenade in Gstaad itself.

The second thing is the character. Gstaad keeps its valley low and wooden, and keeps its social conventions along similar lines. It is unhurried and deliberately traditional, and the people who come back every year come back partly because nothing about it is designed to be noticed.

Saanen sits at just over a thousand metres on the valley floor, with a single asphalt runway of 1,400 by 40 metres. It is a mountain airfield operating under visual flight rules in daylight, and it requires prior permission for arrival and departure. That combination means light and smaller midsize aircraft, flown by crews who are happy with the approach, and it means the plan changes if the weather does. Local rules extend to things you would not find at a large airport: landings on one runway direction and departures on the other are suspended during a funeral in Saanen.

So the honest position is this. If your aircraft fits, Saanen turns a two-hour drive into ten minutes. If it does not, or if the cloud base is wrong, the answer is Bern or Geneva and a drive, and the sensible plan has both in it from the start. Ask your operator the question early, because it is an aircraft question rather than a scheduling one. Helicopters can shorten the last leg from the larger airports in daylight and acceptable visibility, and capacity in the peak weeks goes at the same time as everything else. See helicopter charter.

Gstaad's peak is the traditional one: the fortnight around Christmas and New Year, then the February school holidays across Switzerland, Britain and France. Those weeks are not merely busy but allocated, and the hotels, chalets, cars and airfield slots go to people who asked in the autumn.

Around them the valley keeps a diary worth knowing about when you choose dates. A snow mountain bike stage race is held in the region in January, and the hot-air balloon festival at Chateau-d'Oex, a short drive down the valley, fills the same end of the month with demand well beyond its own size. In summer the region hosts an international polo tournament and a long-running classical music festival, which do the same to rooms and cars in July and August. None of that is a reason to stay away. It is a reason to ask what is on before you fix a week.