Le Manoir De Bellerive

In a beautiful park, the staff is welcoming and the rooms are spacious and comfortable. In addition, the place is quiet and the pool is fantastic.

A former manor house with views of the river. Rooms are adequate but a bit tacky. Breakfast is OK. No restaurant service during our stay. No lift. Not recommended

We had a dinner here. The service was very friendly but the food didn’t taste fresh and was very overpriced.

It's impossible to disagree with some of the negative reviews of this extraordinary place, but for me it offered a strange magic very rarely found in the modern world. It felt like I'd been transported to the scene of a Scott Fitzgerald novel, and half expected unseen characters to materialise and give life to the place. Our room was huge and astonishingly grand, with views across the glorious grounds dominated by 300 year old cedars. We slept with the windows open and haven't heard such birdsong in decades. The new owners are Chinese and their influence works brilliantly in some areas, less so in others. The bar is gorgeous, with really clever use of oriental influence. Our room contained some beautiful Chinese furniture that worked surprisingly well alongside traditional French pieces. Our huge bathroom was light and cleverly worked, though the loo was in a separate cupboard-like room some distance away! Definitely quirky but quirks can be very refreshing in an era of American-influenced predictability. Yes, there are weeds in the gravel, but in a wildlife haven like this, I was rather pleased that nobody is using weedkiller. They could probably use a gardener but like many of these vast properties in the region, running costs are very high and the tourist season relatively short. It's privately owned, not run by a corporation, so prioritizing investment must be very tricky. In summary, our stay was one we'll remember, and I'd recommend it to anyone needing tranquillity and balm for the soul.

To escape .... we reserved a room and impossible to reach the phone to book the restaurant. Arrived on the site ... close the door, the manager tells us not to have seen our reservation, that we are alone and restaurant closed. It's a four and a half.