We stayed at Rue Du Chanois from the 11th of June – 25th June 2016
It’s a beautiful 3 bedroom accommodation, with exterior modelling of a medieval castle, in Pink it will appeal to the little girls of the family (and big girls ) as its your own personal fairy castle. Its located in Montreuil Aux Lions, in the Picardy (pron. Pi Kay Dee) area of France.
You are 27KM from Meaux, and 20-30 minutes from Paris or Reims, 20 Minutes from Disneyland and Val’d Europe. It’s a fantastic location for Disney there are 2 tolls from Rue Du Chanois to Disney of €2.20 & €1.90 each way
The local village has a few shops and restaurants, consisting of Bakery, Pharmacy, Café/Restaurants, Tabac, Spar and a few others, The Tabac had a restaurant and it was the best Steak myself and my wife have ever had with sublime pepper sauce.
It’s a 10 Minute drive to the nearest Town, which has 2 large supermarkets and shops, as well as restaurants and fast-food outlets.
As the area you are staying is more rural you will find not many of the residents speak much English, so take your guides and translators.
If you are travelling from Calais by car as we did, you are looking at Tolls of about €40.00 each way, but well worth it for the very quick and straight route of the A Roads.
Upon arrival to the town you may well see an advertisement board for the property, which is a little perplexing as once you approach the right street there is zero indication of where you are going, and the entrance is literally a dirt track into some woods, we were very lucky and only went up and down Rue Du Chanois once, but I feel a sign at the bottom of the path would be greatly appreciated by anyone looking for the entrance.
Once you find the right entrance, you are greeted by a short drive through some very dense woods, as you wonder if this is the right way until you can see the pink of the castle breaking through the wooded area, the dirt road has parking/turning area for about 2 vehicles and a drive up to the front of the property, so you can reverse your luggage to the door. If you arrive by night, there is flood lights which light the parking area up.
When we arrived, we gave Camille a rough estimate and she left the property unlocked for us, this was great as it gave us time to go in and explore the place in our own time.
The first room, is the living room, it consists of a large sofa area and desk with some books and a TV, DVD, VHS & Stereo. as well as decent Wi-Fi Access (we got about 10Mbps) there is a useful booklet in French and English with info on the house and local areas, and there is also a large fireplace for colder nights, we never found need for it though, one complaint is the sofa, has been replaced since we booked, it’s now a large curved sofa, when there was a 3peice originally on the photos, the sofa there is not very comfortable, and is difficult to sit on with others, as its low back and hard you cannot really relax on it.
Now the TV, it has French TV, BBC News & Sky News, if like me you intend on taking some sort of internet streaming device for Netflix etc., you need to take a couple of adaptors to make it compatible with the TV, there is no HDMI connection, so you need a DVI-D to HDMI adaptor, because of this your will also need an adaptor to connect the audio to a 3.5mm Jack as well, or you can just buy an RCA cable to do it all.
Buy before you go, as FNAC (Frances version of HMV) wanted €45.00 for the adaptor when they are a few pound on Amazon. But we found Val’d Europe supermarket sold them for €10.00.
The Living room had French doors leading to the Patio/Garden Area, a turret of steps leading to the upstairs and downstairs bedrooms, doorways to the kitchen and hall which leads down stairs to another bedroom.
The Kitchen is very long has a dining area with chairs, a dishwasher, electric oven and hob, there is a pantry/ utility room, with washing machine and tumble drier, refrigerator, kettle and toaster, as the toaster was pretty rubbish, only half of it worked so we bought a cheap replacement, a little white one, a gift from us to the house, so enjoy .
The patio area has a Hot Tub which works very well and can fit 6+ people in quite well. We had 2 adults and 3 kids in with room to spare. there is a grassy area here for kids to play on which is enclosed and fenced off so they cannot escape.
Upstairs is the Master Bedroom, which has the most comfortable bed (the photos of the beds make them look a bit lumpy but this is due to them having feather bedding), a roll top bath and shower, as well as lots of storage and wardrobes, upstairs has a separate toilet, and leads to another exterior door, as well as the castle turret which leads to the roof, this was closed off to us though as the recent rain had damaged the tiles. There is also a small room in the turret which is great of a kids play area.
Another set of steps leads up to another part of the roof but again this was closed off at the top to us. The bedroom has a large fireplace too for colder stays.
You there are two sets of stairs leading down to two twin bedrooms, both of which have showers, separate toilets, and one bedroom has an additional bath.
Throughout the house, it is amply furnished in appropriate furniture, and decorated to a high standard with features such as huge wooden beams, built in wardrobes, there are plenty of lamps for light, and all windows have shutters or quality blinds to black out the light in the daytime.
Outside you have access to acres of woodland, it had rained a lot before we arrived so the ground was basically mulch, so we didn’t do much exploring, but we did see some Bunnies, Red Squirrels and we were very lucky to see a Stag, which as soon as it spotted us ran away.
There are plenty of red slugs and some very large snails about too..
Unfortunately, I do have a couple of issues, which I feel could have been avoided hence why I am putting them in here.
The House is stunningly beautiful so do not get me wrong, but the cleanliness of the house was lacking, at first it felt rustic to have cobwebs in the beams, but them we noticed it in every corners, under chairs, on the lights etc.. the house needs a deep clean, some of the pots we used felt grainy as not clean properly in the dishwashers, glasses were the same, the windows and glass doors were full of the previous guest’s children’s hands and lips, the main large windows seem to have never been cleaned and are very dirty, the floors were full of dust and there was no access to a mop, the rugs were very dusty too. Like I say its needs a good cleaning and the house would be perfect. Some small touches are lacking like for example, matching light bulbs and working light bulbs, it detracts from the lovely décor.
Another issue was with ants. the house is in the woods so it’s expected to be the odd insects about, but there were massive infestations in the garden area and as such the house was full of them along skirting boards, using ant powder works but only while it was down so for 2 weeks we had to leave ant powder around all the rooms skirting’s, once of twice we were woken to ants crawling over our bodies in the night, and whatever you do do not leave out a glass of orange juice or it will be black and moving the next day, I cannot stress enough how many ants there were hundreds and hundreds, the house needs fumigating and issue solving at the point.
A very serious point is one of the lamps next to the bed where my child was sleeping was broken to the point where the electrical contacts were exposed, now it took me all of 2 minutes to re-screw it in and fix it, but this in itself could have killed someone! Little things seemed to be overlooked and they can be the most serious.
Another issue is personal to our booking, when we booked the home was advertised with a pool available between certain hours, it was worded to suggest that while not connected to this building it was in another building which would have been a very short walk.
It was in fact at Camille’s fathers house across the town, this fact was only presented to us upon arrival, which we feel to be very misleading and also we were given no directions of further info to accessing the pool. We feel very mislead especially as we had a previous conversation with Camille about our disabled children having access for longer hours, we booked specifically as our children cannot really use public pools etc. due to special requirements, to find there was in fact no pool locally to the house very disappointing. The advertisement has since changed to show a hot tub rather than a pool, but at no point were we contacted prior to advise of changes to the home. It was twice as annoying as we spent money buying, play inflatables and diving sticks for the kids to play with in the pool. The children were disappointed too with this aspect. I am very tempted on this point to request a partial refund, as myself and my wife strongly agree that it was very misleading.
The home isn’t really suitable for disabled people with mobility problems, as the stairs are very tight and winding, the toilets are located only in the bedrooms up and down stairs and moving around the house can be exhausting sometimes. There is no wheelchair access.
Other than these small but serious points the house is absolutely beautiful, but I do not think we would stay again due to the cleanliness and ant’s issues, also the issue over the pool, but the time we did spend there we really enjoyed, and our children very much enjoyed their French holiday.
I feel I am being very generous giving 4 stars but it is slightly better than 3 stars, and it could easily achieve 4-5 star (circles / owl eyes) if the above points are taken on-board and resolved.
Also another point to mention is France has a Tourism Tax, generally this is taken by 99% places in the booking fee, But this was advised to us as we arrived to not of been charged, so we were charged a further €1.40 Per Adult Per Night, children are exempt, again no mention of this on the booking page.
NOTE: I am a photographer, as such my photographs were taken to keep for memories sake, they do not represent the house as we found it and in fact may make it look better than our experience.
Toutes les réservations sont effectuées directement auprès du propriétaire 