SLIPPING around on skis on top of a snowy mountain felt like being on a different planet. I was in unfamiliar high terrain that gleamed white. I also had long, alien extensions on my feet, which seemed useless. It was last month and I was someway up the 2000m-high Schmittenhöhe mountain in Zell Am Zee near Salzburg. It was my first ski attempt.

My instructor, Mathieus, who glided elegantly around me, started off by teaching me the snowplough, to brake. While moving along, I had to put my skis into an upside down V position to stop. A few hours were spent sliding precariously down a slight dip; trying to stop and then hobbling up again from side to side like a crab. Often, the instructor had to block my descent like a goalkeeper, saving me from hurtling down an endless white slide out of control. "Snow plough, snow plough," he would yell frantically in his German accent. I would make some sort of useless attempt to spread my skis forcing him to make a lunge for me. If he missed, I dived for the ground. And all around, little children who looked like they should barely be able to walk zoomed past.

Often while I lay in a dishevelled heap of glinting skis, poles, and boots, a child would look at me with bewilderment - wondering how anyone could get so topsy-turvy. And cool, goggle clad ski groupie adults whizzed past coming down from the heights - making it all look easy.

Eventually, Mathieus decided I was ready to go down a baby slope and get the banana lift up. It was a mistake - it all ended in one huge dive at the end and an embarrassing befuddled banana lift episode.

The banana lift is a piece of rubber, which fits behind your thighs, and drags you up a moving rope. I kept missing the revolving bits of rubber and with a long impatient queue forming behind me, eventually my instructor had to intervene to send me off. From then on, the heavy smoking banana lift operator would stop the revolving rope as soon as he saw me coming. He knew it was the only way to get rid of me.

On my fourth day of skiing (my last) as I tried to master turning - I had a breakthrough. Suddenly I learned how to twist and stop on a slope in neat parallel turns.

I felt so liberated, as if I could fly and was in control of those alien skis for the first time. Mathieus was impressed also, that at last his infinite patience had paid off and remarked to my friend who was also learning: "Watch Sarah go - she can fly now."

Skiing is not a cheap holiday and I always felt it was for the boring bourgeoisie. I felt I would never fit in on the slopes. And it is true - for most of the time I didn't - as a tumbling wreck of a learner. But when I became one with my skis it opened up a whole new meditative form of exercise, which was truly bliss. With clear mountain air and surreal views above a quaint Austrian lakeside town, this experience is precious for all ages.

I would have it over a beach any day.