Holiday stays in the Meuse
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To appreciate the beauty of our National Park, you need to spend some time here. We opened up the site for holiday-lets-meuse very soon after acquiring the property in 1991.
In addition to running our sort stay and long stay tennis programmes, we offer accommodation for those just visiting the region. Many of our short-stay holiday visitors come from Germany, Belgium, Holland, the North-East of France and the Paris region. All of these groups will know our region by at least having transitted it in order to get down south.
Currently we offer three bedrooms : -
. Bedroom "Côte" - has three single beds (maximum capacity), with a private shower room, up two flights of stairs.
. Bedroom "Mirabelle" - has one double bed, one single bed, and a cot (maximum capacity), with a private shower room, up two flights of stairs.
. Bedroom "Madeleine" - has one double bed (maximum capacity), with a private bath room, up one flight of stairs.
All bedrooms come with a communal lounge area, and pool table. All bedrooms can do self-catering - a fully equipped kitchen is at your disposal. The nearest supermarkets are 14 kms away.
Guests can reserve the entire unit, and treat it as a self catering gîte, or have meals supplied. Maximum capacity is 9 persons.
Prices start from € 44/person/night. Discounts are available for multiple occupancy, and long term stays.
All meals are available : a full breakfast costs € 9; three-course lunch and evening meals cost € 15. Children's prices ( Under 14) are € 6 and € 9 respectively. Half board, or full board solutions are available.
The great advantage is that you'll only have a four hour car journey to get to the Meuse, and you're already in a region that's very different from your own. Foremost you'll want to be in Meuse for the countryside, and country pursuits. Further, there's a designated tourist site at Madine, just 18 kms away, which has a wide range of activities on site - golf, riding, sailing, biking, hiking, angling .
A good meal
Every region of France boasts about its gastronomic reputation, and Meuse, in its wider region of Lorraine, is no exception. However, finding the true taste of Lorraine is difficult. Many restaurants of the big towns like Metz and Nancy have more and more standardised menus to cater for a local and regional visitor who is less and less experimental when he is eating. This type of "standardised", "nationwide" food, then tends to trickle down to the country restaurants. That horror of modern eating, the dish prepared off the premises, sometimes frozen and rewarmed on site, is becoming ever more frequent.
The real French bistro still exists, the one which is frequently run by a man and wife team, with no more than a dozen tables, and where the man and wife prepare and conceive all of the food themselves. When you eat in this type of restaurant, you don't order the menu, you just ask for the plat du jour, and eat what everyone else in the building is eating. Almost always the food is well balanced, locally sourced, and excellent. I can recommend one or two restaurants of this type in the Meuse, but you can't find them everywhere. The good news is that this type of meal, with drinks, shouldn't cost more than €15 a head, and it is not only a perfect gastronomic experience, but also a relaxing way to enter a local community, and meet the people who live there all the time. Don't expect great language skills or great elegance, but the people are honest and good-humoured.
First World War
Meuse is a historic area. Up on the hill above Loupmont we have trenches still remarkably intact from the First World War. There are other areas only a few kilometres away where the trenches have been perfectly restored.
An hour's drive away is Verdun, where the scene of two epic battles in 1916 have been movingly restored. This is a must-visit for any type of guest to the Meuse, even if you are not a historian. It is sure to give you new perspectives on life, at least for a few days. The hopelessness and stupidity and waste of war can not be stronger anywhere than on the Verdun battlefields.
So, if you're looking for a peaceful stay in the countryside with associated country activities of a tourist site, with a couple of very pleasant, restaurant visits, and a small exposure to the horrors of war, then you have a perfect holiday.
We run a booking service through agents, or you can book directly with us. To offer the best rates for our guests, we do not have our own payment and reservation system on line, nor do we take credit cards. Whilst this is very convenient for the guest, this is expensive and complicated for our site. We offer a personalised, seasonal, service, where all you have to do is send an email to ask when you can visit us, with how many people. We'll be back to you rapidly to say what we have available.
Our site has various permutations, so even if our self-catering flat for 4 people is taken, we'll be sure to offer some other solution. Our site is permanently occupied by the owners, so nothing we offer is standardised. You will be welcomed and looked after with a view to the guest getting maximum value for money, and a pleasurable stay above his expectations.
How to book
We are not registered on any tourist classification system (we used to be). We prefer to have complete flexibility over our many possibilites, from one night bed and breakfast to holiday flat lets, to permanent accommodation arrangements, furnished or unfurnished. This is only possible if you detach yourself from standardised classification standards. That means that we have no exterior sales and marketing obligations. We have lived by reputation alone since 1991.
The basis of our holiday lets is both a touristic one, and one where we have offered long term stays for tennis-playing students. There are many other logical destinations for the hardened tourist to visit than the Meuse. A visit to the Meuse is first and foremost a visit to the countryside in a beautiful country.
But, you are still close to major cities, and major airports, and more commercial attractions. It's excellent for children, and for students. The summer is very long in our region, but we offer tennis tournaments for long stay students in winter too. The tournaments are year round. For this type of guest we prefer to keep our personalised approach, and offer the benefit of our experience.
The year round letting is built around a charitable organisation that organises tennis tournament tours, and educational stays. Much of the group accommodation is destined for use by children on two, three, or four week sporting visits in the holidays, or young adults on more permanent stays that can last longer than a year. These young people receive all of our attention, and the holiday lets, separated from the tennis tours, are a complimentary activity to make use of the multiple options we have in our buildings.
To make a holiday booking, send us an email and say when you want to come, with how many people, and we'll be right back with three or four possibilities!
