A series of coincidences led Francesca Eyres to the then little-known ski resort of Morzine in the French Alps 17 years ago, where she still lives with husband Paul and their three children. Words Anna Tobin

Francesca and Paul Eyre made their separate ways to the tiny French Alpine village of Morzine, each looking for a break from their hectic lives. Neither expected to find love and put down roots in this little-known ski resort, tucked between Mont Blanc and Lake Geneva. Seventeen years later, however, they are married with three children, and running a successful chalet business.

Francesca’s journey began when her life was thrown into disarray by the death of her mother. “I had been based in Ireland with my mother and siblings at the time,” she explains. “I then had to move to London with my younger siblings and settle them into our father’s home.

“I was working as a chef and I was slowly building up a successful business, but I didn’t really take to London life. My friends were slowly starting to settle down, mainly with rich bankers, and I just didn’t see myself living that lifestyle.”

Then a strange coincidence at a wedding she catered in Kent set off a chain of events that would eventually lead her to Morzine. “I was wearing a treasured string of pearls that Mum had left me at that wedding, and at some point the string must have broken and I lost them. They meant so much to me and I was so upset when I realised they weren’t going to be found.

“A long time later I was doing a function in London and there was a girl there who I’d also happened to work with at the Kent wedding and she said ‘I wonder what happened to the guy that found the pearls? I bet he made a fortune from selling them.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

Francesca traced the man and discovered that he had given the pearls to his girlfriend. “I managed to get them back,” she explains, “and it turned out that this guy was now running his own catering business. His partner in the business called me up soon after and said that he had a friend with a chalet in Morzine who was looking to hire a cordon bleu chef for a couple of weeks, would I do it? And I did.

“I’d worked a ski season before in Courchevel, and although I’d enjoyed the work, I’d found it quite a wealthy, snobby resort, not my cup of tea. I found Morzine to be the complete opposite, I loved it and decided to stay on.”

Read more in the March issue of Living Abroad magazine