Colin Nicholson finds that a winter holiday in Canada's Quebec province can be action-packed without taking to the slopes.

I'm going on a winter holiday of a different sort, I patiently explained to my friends. No, not skiing, not winter sun either, nor even a city break.

No, I was going to see nature when it's at its most beautiful - in its white winter coat.

Of course, many people go skiing for the scenery, but how much of a close-up do you really get of nature when you're hurtling down a piste?

Caught in a flurry of enthusiasm for my mission, I signed up to every activity possible in the space of the three days I had in Québec, Canada, starting with a snowshoeing safari from the Auberge Lac à l'Eau Claire, a couple of hours north-east of Montréal.

Snowshoeing for me always conjures up images of strapping tennis racquets to your feet, but modern snowshoes have metal frames that grip the snow, letting you clamber up and down forest paths without slipping.

As with most walking safaris, the tell-tale trails of fauna were more apparent than the animals themselves.

Our guide Gaspard, a reformed hunter, showed us the striped maple saplings which a moose had gorged on, getting high on the sap in the process, the hare tracks, the tracks of the fox chasing it, the holes ptarmigan make as they drop like stones from the trees to bury themselves in the snow at night, leaving no trail for predators.

Finally, as his pièce de résistance, Gaspard showed us the neat claw marks of a bear going up the trunk of a tree.

It all seemed Narnia-like, this magical world of events we couldn't see, not even a drunken moose.

The closest we came to communing with the animals was when we felt the small tugs on a fishing line as we squatted on the ice next to the holes we had drilled.

Not so our next activity at the Auberge le Baluchon nearby. I have always wanted to gallop through a snow-covered landscape on horseback, giving orders in the style of Kurosawa's Japanese epic Ran to start great wars or avenge terrible deeds.

In fact, I am a rather mediocre horse rider and even the horse ignored most of my commands, let alone my legion of troops.

My battle was staying on, and my horse seemed more interested in galloping through the snowdrifts than I.

Frankly I was quite relieved when I was out of the saddle and in a sled pulled by a couple of cart horses on the way to the ice rink.

The ice rink? Well, this was a rink without tinned music, screaming children and having to skate anti-clockwise. Instead it was a stretch of the frozen Rivière du Loup - the river of the wolf - twisting and turning for 1.4km around the archipelago, glinting in the sun, and with ornamental benches for a little sit down. Very genteel.

And that's what I enjoyed about Québec. It has a European gentility. I may love the winter, but I'm not some adventurer who wants to camp in -22C or sit around huts heating cans of beans on open fires.

Snowmobiling, which we did the next day, appeals more to that element.

Although it is a great way of seeing the diversity of the landscape, as you speed across frozen lakes and up narrow forest paths, more than an hour of noise and petrol fumes (some people go for days on end) left me cold - metaphorically rather than literally, as they have heated handlebars and you wear a thermal suit.

So I was glad for a massage at our third stop, the Auberge de la Montagne Coupée, followed by another many-course dinner. The food here is French, with some New World ingredients, such as bison and caribou, and served without French snootiness - everyone is happy to speak English here, for which I was grateful, as the Québécois accent sounds like French spoken with an American twang.

They claim it is closer to the French spoken in the 18th century, before Québec was conquered by the British, just as Americans argue that their accent is closer to Shakespearean English than ours.

The Québécois may be proud of their heritage as 'Nouvelle France', just as some Americans call themselves New Englanders - but hospitality they do American-style.

After the fine dining and I needed some exercise, so, under the cliffs of Cut Mountain, I went cross-country skiing. OK. I said I wasn't going skiing. But cross-country is more akin to snow shoeing or running than piste skiing. And if you want to explore the forest paths without the noise and fumes of a snowmobile, then this is a beautiful way to go.

It builds up your arms, as well as your legs, and rewards all your uphills with long gliding downhills.

If that was a bit scary, the really hair-raising alternative was dog-sledding around the top of the cliffs. Zipped up to my neck with just my head popping out of the sled, I did wonder if I hadn't just lain down in my coffin as the dogs raced the other sleds.

This got particularly hair-raising when the dogs got distracted and decided to chase a squirrel up a tree.

Three days, nine activities, phew. If you're worried that a winter holiday without the pistes will be boring, think again. The adventures of Narnia await you.

TRAVEL FILE

COLIN flew to Montréal, via Paris, with Air France (0870 142 4343 or www.airfrance.co.uk). Flights start at £379 including tax. He stayed with Hôtellerie Champêtre (www.hotelleriechampetre.com) which has 25 inns and resorts in Québec. For more information about Québec, see www.bonjourquebec.co.uk or call freephone 0800 051 7055. Lines are open until 10pm.