Salon Bleue is our dining room which we use for breakfast and for dinner one the days we offer dinner, but its also available you our guests if they want to sit in front of the wood burner on a winter day and read a book, play games with their family at the big dining table, or siting relaxed in the Danish design classics by Arne Jacobsen the Egg or the Swan talking to other guests.
Bacchus (the god of wine) is our winter wine cellar - we know this might sound strange, but during winter, we keep all our wine on the ground floor and not in the wine cellar that can get too cold for the wine. There will be wine from our wine partners in Saint-Pourcain and also whiskey, gin and other alcohol from Herisson and Vichy. Another room where you can sit and relax or think about what wine you want to enjoy for dinner....
Our wine cellar has developed from being a black hole under the house where we would never go, to an impressive display of local wine from nearby Saint-Pourcain. Our guests often ask if we offer wine tasting in the cave, and we do when we have an entire group who occupy the entire house, and we know wine is interesting for them. We once had our local cheese and milk supplier Le Ch'ti Cabri presenting their cheese to a group of Belgium guests in the cave as a break in their dinner....
In the summer the cave is nice and cool and an place where you can sit and enjoy a good glass of Saint-Pourcain white or some bubbles from our excelent wine makers.
Our attic has always been one of the most impressive rooms in the entire house. The height and the volume, the quality of the old woodwork surprises every guest, you simply don’t expect it when you look at the building from the outside.
We have transformed the natural beauty of the attic space for our guests to a Gallery where we display the art of local artist and painters. Our guests are welcome to relax and enjoy the tranquility of the place, use the sofa our lean back in the Arne Jacobsen Egg, and if it’s on a hot day maybe take a bottle of cooled wine from the wine fridge in the attic and enjoy it there.
If you are the more active type, the other function of the attic might be more suitable for you. The attic is also our gym , so you can get away there early in the morning to do your yoga or to do some power training with the TRX, and you will be doing it in the most beautiful room you can imagine.
Our original idea for the barn was to create a combined cafe and brocante not only for our guests, but as a benefit for the village and surroundings. Over time we realized it would be impossible for the two of us to run both a Chambres d’hôtes and a cafe, so the idea was abandoned....
But this did not stop us in transforming the barn into a space we could share with our guests. In one part of the barn, we have opened up the room which has given space to hang our Canadian canoe as a decoration under the roof, but at the same time it has also created a space, where we can use our Green Egg BBQ inside. We use it often for BBQ for dinner when we cook for our guests, but it’s also available for our guests in La Boulangerie. At the mezzanine in the barn, we have created a space for relaxing. The chaiselonge there was first in use after we finished the work on renovating the walls in the entire barn, and it was really rewarding sitting there with a good glass of wine reflecting on the result of the hard work....
When we moved here in 2019 the garden and outdoor space was neglected and completely overgrown. We called it our second project after and while renovating the house. A welcomed change to be outside instead of inside in the dust and noise.
Over time we have opened up the garden , removed bushes and trees to make it more welcoming and useful for our guests. At the end of the garden, we created a vegetable garden where we to the extent possible grow vegetables and fruit for our cooking and breakfast. We have sitting areas all over the garden for our guests for relaxing and areas for breakfast or dinner when the weather allows. The last terrace we created in front of the barn was designed to capture the last evening sun with a good glass of wine sitting in renovated antique garden furniture.
In one of our barns, we have created the "Chicken barn suite " for our chickens. The chickens are running free in the garden from morning to evening, they are used to the parked cars and especially likes the ones with a lot of insects on the front.... So, our garden with the chickens will never turn into a well-trimmed park but it will remain authentic and with purpose and charm.