Avergne France – Chateaux Maulmant

We were cruising on good roads and the traffic was quite lite.  The closer we got to the Avergne area of France the bigger the farms got, and the bigger the herds of white muscly steers became.  Rosie loves the French countryside, small scruffy hedgerows, untidy farmhouses with crooked shutters and tiles coming off the roofs, abandoned barns and houses showing the rural decline, but it all looks out of a storybook.

The nearer we got to the Chateaux the narrower the roads became, 20 mins out of Vichy and just through the small village of St Priest Bramefant built with the house doors opening up onto the roadside sits the Chateaux on a small hillside.

Driving up the long sweeping driveway the Chateaux comes into view and the beautiful box garden in front frames it beautifully.

The site of the Chateaux de Maulmont was a Knights Templar stronghold in the 13th Century.  Built by Renaud de Vichy, Master of the Order of The Templars after he returned from the crusades in 1255.

In the beginning of the 14th Century the then King of France took over the properties owned by the Templars and members of the royal family lived in Maulmont for the next few hundred years.

In 1829 Princess Adelaide, sister to the King acquired the property and rebuilt it into a hunting lodge, in 1890 the turrets and roof line were added to make it look more like a castle.

Rosie doesn’t have an expensive turret room, thank god, there is no lift, and to get to your turret room you leave the expanse of the wide wooden stairway and corridors and have to negotiate a narrow as winding stone stairwell.

Our room is good enough, huge windows open with an ancient mechanism to look over the farmland below .  The cows are in the field and a moss covered lake is below the window, plus the helipad, a downpour of rain suddenly falls straight from the sky.  Its three o clock!  The bloody rain has started in France again right on que!

After the rain it is quite humid, Rosie and The Operator have a wander around the grounds and take a few pics of the pool on the terrace.  There is also a pool inside in the basement.  The rain has set in now, Rosie gazes out the window and does abit of writing, The Operator is pondering how to ask a Frenchman for an iron…we have a dinner reservation for 7.00pm in the chateaux Michelin rated restaurant and The Operators good shirt has sadly been at the bottom of the suitcase for the whole trip.

The Operator went downstairs and instead of verbally trying to communicate he opted for sign language, his ‘ironing a shirt’ charade was quite good…it didn’t matter though as the Manager was now on duty and he was an Englishman!

Decked out in our travelling suitcases finest we glided down the stairs..Rosie is in a chateaux you know, she glides…and went to the bar for pre dinner drinks and canapes, we then adjourned…Rosie is really enjoying the evening…to the dining room where we had the most beautiful meal…our waiter was French and unusually didn’t speak a word of English….he was the master of sign language though, The Operator and The Waiter were speaking the same language and after five courses we had a brilliant night.

Back in the room, we opened the huge windows onto the balmy night and sat on the windowsill.  You could still smell the freshly cut grass and the huge white Charolais cattle (found that out from my menu) were glowing in the gloom, the country noise was amazing!  The sound of the wild animals calling to each other in the forest and then the chorus of the crickets and frogs from the ponds…it was louder than traffic, but so lovely.

We had a great sleep under our canopied bed and awoke to a three hour drive to Sarlat la Caneda in the Dordogne, today we meet up with No1 and Aurora who are joining us for a few days.  Cant wait to get there…this is Rosies dream village.