Ten cosy winter resorts for people who don't really ski

Plenty of people love winter mountains and feel no need to slide down them on planks. If that's you — or your other half — the trick is choosing a resort that treats non-skiers as guests rather than cargo. The ten below offer proper towns, winter walking networks, spas, toboggan runs and long lunches with a view, so a snow holiday works even if your skis never leave the rental shop.

Built for elegance before ski lifts existed, Megève's medieval centre does horse-drawn sleighs, art galleries and patisserie counters like nowhere else in the Alps. Fifty kilometres of groomed winter footpaths wind through larch forest with Mont Blanc peeking between branches. Ride the Mont d'Arbois gondola up for lunch on a sun terrace and descend without a single moment of peril.

A sunny Tyrolean plateau made famous by Olympic cross-country skiing, Seefeld is really a giant winter-walking paradise: 140 kilometres of cleared paths, frozen lakes to circle and Kaiserschmarrn — shredded pancake with plum compôte — at every hut. The village is pedestrianised, pretty and calm. Try biathlon shooting or a first cross-country lesson; both are kinder than downhill.

A lakeside town with a mountain attached, which changes everything for non-skiers: the promenade around frozen Lake Zell, boat-house cafés, and the Tauern Spa's rooftop pool steaming against the peaks. Skiers in the group ride the Schmittenhöhe; everyone reunites for lunch at altitude via the pedestrian-friendly cable car. Salzburg is ninety minutes away for a culture day.

The Queen of the Dolomites treats the passeggiata — the evening stroll in good clothes — as a competitive sport. Around it: rose-coloured peaks, sixty kilometres of winter trails, ice skating in the Olympic stadium and Italian food that laughs at usual ski-resort standards. Take the cable car towards Tofana simply to gawp. Aperol o'clock arrives early and often, as it should.

On the Italian side of Mont Blanc, Courmayeur pairs a cobbled, boutique-lined centre with the Skyway Monte Bianco — a rotating cable car that lifts non-skiers to 3,466 metres for espresso above the glaciers. Thermal baths at nearby Pré-Saint-Didier soak away any residual stress. The food scene, from mountain-hut polenta to Michelin ambitions, is the real headline act.

Swap the Alps entirely: above the Arctic Circle, skiing becomes optional garnish to huskies, reindeer sleighs, snowmobile safaris and the serious business of aurora hunting. Levi's glass-roofed cabins let you watch the sky from bed. Days are short and blue-lit, saunas are non-negotiable and the silence of a snow-loaded forest is its own kind of luxury. Pack every layer you own.

The original winter resort — tourists first overwintered here in 1864 — St Moritz treats snow as a social season. Non-skiers get the frozen lake, which hosts polo, horse racing and gourmet festivals on solid ice, plus the Engadin's famously sunny walking paths and hotel bars of cheerful absurdity. Ride the Muottas Muragl funicular at dusk for the best valley view in Switzerland. February is peak spectacle, if the prices don't wind you; January is calmer.

Kitzbühel's medieval centre — frescoed facades in butter yellow and oxblood red — might be the prettiest ski town in Austria, and it works beautifully on foot. Winter walkers get around sixty kilometres of cleared paths, horse-drawn carriages and cafés serving proper Sachertorte, while the casino and boutiques absorb bad-weather days. Time a visit for late January and the Hahnenkamm race turns the whole town into a giddy alpine festival; book beds months ahead for that weekend.

Two towns stitched together beneath Germany's highest mountain, with a superb non-skiing menu: the frozen-blue Partnach Gorge, where ice curtains hang from seventy-metre walls, curling on the Riessersee, and the painted houses of Partenkirchen's Ludwigstrasse for the evening stroll. Ride the cable car up the Zugspitze for glacier views without effort. The gorge is at its crystalline best in deep January cold — bring grippy soles and gloves for the handrails.

A belle-époque spa town stacked up a gorge in the Hohe Tauern, Bad Gastein looks like Wes Anderson designed an alpine resort: grand hotels cling to cliffs either side of a waterfall that thunders straight through the town centre. The thermal waters have soothed aching limbs since Habsburg days, and the Felsentherme's outdoor pools steam gloriously against the peaks. Winter walkers get the valley's sunny high paths. Book a hotel with spa access included; you'll use it daily.