MY WORST fears about agreeing to try skiing in middle age were confirmed when I strained a neck muscle before trying on a ski boot - in a London shop. How old is too old to start skiing? I know Europeans who have been at it all their lives and are still rattling down the slopes in their seventies. But what about ageing, overweight British ski virgins like me?

I have never, ever, wanted to ski. But my wife, Virginia, wanted to try it before we turned 30. Since we turn 50 next year, it seemed like now or never. Our daughters, Stella, 11, and Isabel, 9, were keen. I agreed to tag along, so long as it was somewhere I could just soak up the scenery, culture and cooking for a week. In other words, Italy. Friends in northern Italy recommended a resort called San Martino di Castrozza in the Trentino region. You fly to Treviso or Venice, hire a car and drive up into the Dolomites.

San Martino sits like an amphitheatre surrounded by the High Dolomites. The views from peaks such as Colverde or Tognola alone are worth the price of the ski pass, the rocky pleasure marred only by the Euro-rock booming out of a bar.

Everything would have been perfect were it not for the small matter of being expected to ski. At the baby slope we put on our boots and skis. Surely some mistake. My feet were now painfully encased in what felt like concrete, making it impossible to hobble, far less glide across the snow. But our teacher, Gianpaulo, from the San Martino ski school, assured us that this was the way to do it, and since he was the good-looking, smooth-haired epitome of the Italian ski instructor, I reluctantly took his word for it.

The worst thing was the first lesson. Trying to walk up the slope, slowly and sideways, was hell on sticks. I was ready to pack in the whole painful, pointless exercise after five minutes, but that would hardly have encouraged the children. I tried to tell Gianpaulo to concentrate on them and leave me behind, like some brave maimed climber, but he wouldn't hear of it and dragged me up. Then we climbed on to the “button lift” - a round seat on elasticated cable that you pull down between your legs - and were pulled up to the top of the baby slopes, trying to avoid the embarrassment of falling over with 20 schoolchildren coming up behind.

Now for the downhill bit. Gianpaulo took us patiently through the moves: “Snow plough, parallel skis...” It sounded easy enough in theory, and indeed it seemed easy enough for Stella and Isabel, who sailed down the slope like blasé old masters. Virginia, too, was the picture of 49-year-old grace.

But the old man looked and felt like, well, an old man. It was not just “using muscles you never knew you had”. I really don't have those muscles, and it showed. I ached from thigh to toe. We discovered later that the name San Martino “di Castrozza” means “of the castrated”, because the area was once a pasture for gelded cattle. I knew how they felt.

Then a shocking accident happened: without ever meaning to, I started enjoying myself. I discovered that skiing gets easier, and it is fun. By the third lesson we were slaloming down the nursery slope and moving fast enough for the wind to whistle in my disbelieving ears. We were all feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.

As the old proverb goes, feeling pretty pleased with oneself comes before a fall. After lunch and a half-carafe at the famous Malga Ces lodge, I decided to brave half a proper piste with our daughters. “Don't worry,” I reassured them, “I'll be right behind you.” As soon as my skis touched that steep slope, I was behind them no longer. I hurtled past my serenely gliding girls, screaming “Jesus Chrissssst!” (Isabel said that she thought it must be “an expert shouting instructions to his pupils”). JC apparently heard my prayers and got me to the bottom safely, although I credit the modern miracle of ski technology with keeping me upright - I had finally discovered what those concrete boots were for. Then, rather full of myself, I stepped off the snow still wearing skis, slid on the ice and crashed headlong into a parked car. Virginia still wakes up in the middle of the night, laughing.

But somehow it seemed a fitting end to my holiday adventure - a score draw in man's age-old struggle to conquer nature. I bought the girls “I'm a skier - Dolomiti” badges as medals of honour, and was only slightly tempted to get one myself.

I can think of no better advert for starting to ski in middle age than to say that, having dreaded the prospect, I will probably go again. Who knows, next year you may believe a 50-year- old man can fly.

Need to know

Italian Journeys (020-7373 8058, www.italianjourneys.com) offers seven nights' half board at four- star Romantik Regina Hotel in San Martino di Castrozza from £820pp. The cost includes return flights from Gatwick to Verona on British Airways and seven days' car hire.

Further information www.visit trentino.it; www.sanmartino.com