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Slovenia is roughly the size of East Anglia - rather less flat, admittedly, but with a much briefer coastline. More like Switzerland in its contours but considerably smaller than that country too - only 20,273 sq km, and barely 300km across. It is also considerably less expensive.

Slovenia makes the most of the hand it has been dealt since the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, much more recently, Yugoslavia. "It is large enough to have everything," says the publicity blurb optimistically. But it does have the Alps (the Julian Alps in particular), the Mediterranean (albeit less than 50km of Adriatic coastline), the vast Pannonian Plain, and the "mysterious Dinaric Karst world" (a system of thousands of underground and surface caves) that will, we were told extravagantly, "widen (our) pupils!" Slovenia is also the most forested country in mainland Europe - in spite of the fact that it is said that most of the forest in the Karst system was chopped down long ago to provide the wooden pylons on which the city of Venice now stands.

It also has skiing. Indeed, the curiously named Bloke Plateau was the setting for some of the first-documented downhill skiing in central Europe - as early as the 17th century, when they pioneered a primitive ability to steer their skis. "They have swerved like snakes at an incredible speed to avoid obstacles," wrote Janez Vajkard Valvasor in 1689.

An old Slovenian ski song begins:
"Old Bloke skiers, like ancient Norse/Love the skisport and brave the course/They speed 'cross field and down through trees/On barrel staves, not real skis."

Slovenia has as many as 50 ski areas but only half are marketed to tourists and only one - Kranjska Gora - has an international reputation. (Sarajevo, the war-ravaged Bosnian city that hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, is staging something of a comeback.) All are small-to-medium resorts, with easy slopes and few surprises.

The country's attractions as a ski destination were highlighted when the Olympic champion Franz Klammer spearheaded a campaign to hold the 2006 Winter Olympics at Klagenfurt, in his native Austria. For the first time in Winter Games history, they would have been shared by three countries: Austria, Italy and Slovenia. But the bid lost out to Turin in Italy.

Kranjska Gora (811m), an attractive little town in the Zgornjesavska Valley, has a good variety of skiing, with slopes for all levels, including World Cup runs at Podkoren. But in terms of easy access, Krvavec (pronounced Kr-var-vets) takes some beating. The transfer from Slovenia's delightful capital, Ljubljana (a smaller version of Prague) is a mere 15 minutes, and the gondola ride to the top of the mountain takes seven minutes. Situated in the Karavanke range, with the Kamnik Alps as a backdrop, Krvavec is known as the sunniest ski area in Slovenia. The slopes start at getting on for 1,524m, with skiing up to 1,971m.

Only 45 minutes away is the picturesque Lake Bohinj, which some visitors have said reminds them of Coniston Water in the English Lake District. To the south-east is a spectacular range of peaks - the first mountain barrier above the Adriatic, which tends to produce substantially more snowfall than anywhere else of similar altitude in the Alps. The mountains are dotted with three ski areas and crowned by Mount Vogel (1,922m) just inside the Triglav National Park. The slopes of this most snow-sure of Slovenia's ski destinations are just a three-minute gondola ride from the lake, and include some satisfying off-piste challenges and a significant vertical drop of more than 1,219m. The other areas are Kobla - effectively just three consecutive chairs with a handful of long runs (like Vogel, more than 3,000 vertical feet) through the forest and a couple of nursery slopes - and the Soriska Planina Ski Centre, a tiny area with three drag lifts serving fewer than four miles of slopes.

New lifts are being installed in many Slovenian resorts. At the moment, Cerkno, with a covered six-seat and four-seat chair, has the country's most modern lift system - although it only serves 11 miles or pistes. Slovenia's highest skiable area is Kanin, close to Bovec in the beautiful Soca valley. With its highest slopes reaching more than 2,286m, and a vertical drop of 650m, Kanin is the only Slovenian resort with skiing above 6,560 ft. Although the resort has less than 10 miles of pistes and only a handful of lifts, it's possible to ski in three countries (in keeping with Klammer's Olympic mission): Italy's Sella Nevea and Tarvisio resorts, and Arnoldstein in Austria. There's some worthwhile ski touring from the resort too.

Perhaps the most picturesque - though tiniest - of Slovenia's ski areas is Straza, above the enchanting lake of Bled, famous for Slovenia's only island, where the ancient Slavs once worshipped Ziva, goddess of love and fertility. Bled Island, dominated by the ancient church of St Mary's, is one of Slovenia's iconic picture-postcard images. It's a sublime area but skiers above the lake will complete the solitary red run and the more languid blue in a few heartbeats. For variety, though, the runs can be skied at night under floodlights before dinner. Slovenia's cuisine tends to be quite a nice blend of Italian and Austrian.

Suitably refuelled, it's time to return to the slopes, perhaps with another verse of that old Slovenian ski song ringing in one's ears:
"Comes hard-headed mountain-man on ski/From Julian Alps, and hits a tree/What breaks? Is it leg or pine?/No matter what, he'll be fine."

They were tough, those old Bloke skiers.

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