The father of the German family next door walked past our patio singing “Heidi, Heidi” at the top of his voice. It could have been the theme tune of a forgotten European TV serial or else, like us, he could have simply have been inspired by the surroundings.

For Plans, on the outskirts of the French alpine town of Le Grand-Bornand in the Massif des Aravis, lives, breathes and exudes Heidi from every viewpoint. Heidi, in case you’ve forgotten, is the novel by Johanna Spyri about the orphan girl brought up by her grandfather amid the pastures and mountains of Switzerland. Goats and goatherds feature strongly.

Match the views but change the country and you’ve got Le Grand-Bornand.

We were staying in Les Fermes de Pierre et Anna, a 300-year-old timber farmhouse renovated to take guests on a bed and breakfast basis. We’d picked up a car at Geneva airport and driven the 41 miles (66km) to the farm. It’s a pleasant enough journey, but there are enough hairpin bends to keep you fully occupied.

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BACKGROUND

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Outside our bedroom window the golf course gave way to wooded foothills and - in the distance - larger peaks that even in August were streaked with snow. To our left was an ancient barn, a gravel road and tiny, but perfectly formed chapel.

Beyond were some Alpine cows, who, like most of the bovine population of the valley, had large bells slung around their neck. A mile or so up the road there was a gathering of goats. Heidi would have been thrilled.

Yet people don’t go to Le Grand-Bornand and the surrounding Haute Savoie region simply to enjoy the view. Obviously in the winter, you’d be whizzing around on skis or hurtling over the horizon in a toboggan. And you can’t take it easy in the summer either. If Heidi was around, she wouldn’t be staring at goats - no, she’d walking, climbing, cycling, flying, galloping – and in the words of the local tourist office “thrilling all her senses”.

Spurred on by my wife and son, and with strict instructions from my editor to sample a bit of action, I opted to thrill my senses by doing a spot of summer tobogganing or 'luge d’été'. With my son I took the ski-lift to the top of the grassy slope at the neighbouring town of La Clusaz.

From the summit, two metal toboggan tracks snake down the valley, one for beginners and the other for the more experienced. Trembling - with what I hoped was excitement - I sat in my wheeled sledge. A single joystick was the only control. Pull it back to slow down, push it forward to speed up.

Once launched from the summit I took it carefully. Perhaps too carefully. Before I was a third of the way down, seasoned sledgers aged at least 7 were hurtling past me on the advanced tobogganists’ track. In perhaps the longest ascent of the day, I eventually made it to the bottom where my 13-year-old son, who’d set off seconds before me, had got bored with waiting and had wandered off to buy an ice cream.

Happily, there was soon a chance to watch other people making a fool of themselves. Seasoned French television viewers will know that 'Jeux San Frontières', or as we used to know it, 'It’s a Knockout', is an inherent part of French culture. Lots of people get together, put on silly costumes and play silly games.

In Le Grand-Bornand, the car park was closed for evening, and hordes of visitors from the neighbouring towns of La Clusaz, St Jean de Sixt, Manigod and Thônes piled in to do battle. It may not have been important enough for the TV cameras, but that didn’t dampen their enthusiasm.

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