We’re sitting in a refuge high up in the Pyrenees talking Andorran military strategy. That this tiny European country — smaller than Anglesey and with a population the size of Maidenhead’s — doesn’t actually have a military is a mere detail, it seems.

“The Catalans keep saying, ‘Come and invade us,’” says my host. That would pit Andorra’s tiny police force, augmented by a Dad’s Army of the heads of the most venerable Andorran families who have a historic right to bear arms, against the mighty, militant, neighbouring Spanish province.

“It would be a swift victory,” he adds, the fire illuminating his grinning features. “Mainly because they say they’ll just surrender.” Innovative attempts at independence from Spain aside, I really can’t think of a nicer place to be invaded by. Like many, I’d harboured outdated perceptions of Andorra. This dinky snowglobe of a country, clasped in the locked hands of France and Spain, became synonymous with cheap and cheerful ski holidays in the 1980s and 1990s.

Its reputation preceded it and was usually swaying around, dressed in cheap ski gear and talking with a British accent. But after the emergence of rival affordable ski countries, such as Bulgaria and Slovakia, and some serious soul-searching over the past decade, it has been subtly repositioned. Families, couples, luxury — these are the markets it’s courting, and the strategy is paying off, helped by an enlightened approach to tourism and some of Europe’s most snow-sure credentials.

After the fist-gnawing frustration of travel over the past 23 months, faff-free certainty is what travellers crave most — and Andorra is pledging to stay open 365 days a year. That’s partly down to a dovetailing of winter and summer programmes, but also a declaration of test-free, post-pandemic accessibility. #Paradis365, they call it.

As one of the handful of nations in the world without an airport, that promise probably needs a caveat, though having two entry points does rather improve a visitor’s chances. It certainly gets me out of a tight spot. Booked to fly into Toulouse, a 90-minute drive from the northern border, I simply shift flights to Barcelona when President Macron is engaged in a protracted period of anti-Brit grandstanding pre-Christmas 2021.

It’s the more fitting way to arrive, given Andorra leans more to the south than the north (Catalan is the official language). The more uplifting too: the heat of the Barcelona sun may be absent in winter, but not the painterly light it casts, silhouetting Mount Tibidabo’s summit church into a Disneyesque confection as we begin our two-and-a-half-hour journey from sea level to snowline.