Peter Hardy's quest for comfortable boots has lasted half his lifetime, but now he's found the answer... in Leamington Spa

Most skiers are lucky enough to be able to buy their footwear off the shelf. Others need a custom foam fit and a little tinkering from a technician before spending carefree hours together on the mountainside. But an estimated ten per cent of all skiers have such 'difficult' feet that nothing seems to work. I am one of them.

If your feet are two small, too big, or just awkwardly shaped, you need specialist help.

Boots matter. The great Franz Klammer, the Austrian Olympic downhill hero, once told me: "Give me any old pair of skis and I'll beat almost anybody down the mountain - but give me any old boots and I won't necessarily beat anyone".

You don't have to accept extreme discomfort - or downright pain - as a integral component of the skiing day. You just need to know where to go to get help.

The quest for the perfect fit has taken me half a lifetime. What we're talking about here is making a permanent partnership - with a sleek pair of boots that are so efficient and comfortable that you never want to spend a ski day apart ever again.

For a couple of seasons, Strolz of Lech in Austria solved my comfort problem. Strolz has been making boots by hand since 1921. However, their 'new' design is now nearly ten years old. While it fits like a glove, it doesn't allow the range of forward flex that is required by the latest ski technique.

A chance conversation with an American on a chair-lift wearing a smart pair of boots I had never seen before led me to DaleBoot in Salt Lake City.

DaleBoot has a cult following in Utah among the kind of people who ski couloirs in Alta and Snowbird. But it is still almost completely unknown outside the Rockies.

Amazingly the company has been around since 1969, the year that Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. John Glenn, the first American astronaut to circle the earth, was an early fan. He skied in the prototype - they're now in the Smithsonian Museum.

Robert Graham, a former US team freestyler, has now taken on the task of giving his favoured footwear a wider audience by launching DaleBoot Europe from a shop in Kitzbühel. Lockwoods of Leamington Spa, long famed for its boot surgery, was quick to become Graham's first British agency.

What's different about Dale is that the whole boot is truly customised - made up from different components that slot together from the foot outwards. Before you even step on to the Baseboard - the custom insole - 12 separate measurements are taken.

DaleBoot is constantly evolving in appearance and efficiency. But amazingly, one pair should last you for life - you simply discard old components and slot in new ones.

You immediately notice that the tongue is part of the shell, not the liner, and offset so that power is directed straight to your big toe. This makes simple sense as you quickly discover. What is surprising is that no one else has ever thought of it before.

An equally exciting newcomer to Europe is Surefoot, a well-established boot-fitting chain in the US with its own range of custom-fitted boots. Surefoot has now opened shops in Courchevel, Crans Montana, Val d'Isère, and Verbier. A West London branch is planned for this winter.

Crucial to its success is a £25,000 foot-measuring machine that produces an extraordinarily detailed blueprint of the customer's foot.

But personally, I'll stick with DaleBoot. You can talk technical until the lifts close, but the proof of any boot is in its performance. It took six hours to get the fit right, but one run down Kitzbühel's famous Hahnenkamm mountain - and I was hooked for life.

Details: DaleBoot comes in two models and costs £475 from Lockwoods (01926 339388) or DaleBoot in Kitzbühel (+43 5356 62 417).

Strolz of Lech (+43 5583 23610).

Surefoot head office is in Park City, Utah (+1 435 655 8110). Details of European stores are on their website.