Thanks for all your advice.

We're not quite in our dotage and hope to be able to shovel snow for a year or two and we may well keep somewhere back in the UK for when we get so wrinkly that mother tongue care is required.

Your comments have of course challenged our thinking - that's the point of asking for advice. We are set upon VS because we already have many friends there and that's one of the motivations for spending more time there.

However maybe we will look at renting somewhere in the first instance to see how easy it is for us to put down roots and maybe to start to build a relationship with the commmune. We're in this for the long run, and there is the possibility of change both in the local regulations around holiday homes and potentially also in the EU/CH relationship which may make things easier, and being known as "locals" may help some of that.