Hi. Thanks for popping by.

Les Chapelles is a small hamlet in the Charente-Maritime department of France (it’s a little more than half way down the left-hand side of the country if you’re looking at a map). We’ve been living here for nearly nine years now and love it. The sun often shines – in fact there’s only one area of France in which it shines more – which means we can get down to the beautiful beaches which are less than half an hour’s drive away.

There’s easy access to all the things you might be looking for: stunning scenery, historic towns like Saintes, Royan, Cognac and La Roche

lle, magnificent château, great restaurants and, of course, some fantastic wine (we’re about an hour north of Bordeaux, which is a smashing city in itself).

We’re at number 11, Les Chapelles. The main house, where we live, is officially known as a maison de maître, or ‘master’s house’ and is anywhere between 125 and 200 years old (depending on who you ask). We have a number of ancient outbuildings and about three and a half acres of land, part of which is devoted to a horse paddock. The rest provides plenty of room for running around and we have a children’s play area to keep the kids well occupied and a boules court for a bit of traditional French sporting action.

In addition to the horses in the paddock we have three very friendly dogs, a gaggle of chickens and our own children (a girl of 10 and a boy of eight) are always happy to make new friends and show them around.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, because you can come and enjoy it too.

We’ve renovated a couple of lovely old buildings into two splendid holiday gites. One, Le Cadran Solaire, sleeps six people in three big bedrooms. The other, La Cachette, is a cosy two-bedroom apartment sleeping four. We’ve also got a rather spectacular indoor swimming pool for when you need to cool off (or those odd occasions when it might be raining).

We’d love you to come and visit. Plenty of people have and seem to quite like it (you can read some of their comments in our guestbook). Have a dig around the site for more details – you can follow the menus above to find all the information you need, and there are lots of photos here. And, of course, feel free to get in touch. You can also find us on Facebook here.

Les Chapelles was also featured in the Wall Street Journal Europe as a great place to stay!

À bientôt.