La Fontenille - Accommodation / facilities

La Fontenille

Ventenac en Minervois

Accommodation / facilities

We no longer offer bed and breakfast.

Click on the pictures for a larger view.

First floor

There are two double bedrooms:

Puccini, the slightly smaller bedroom, is spacious, at 20 m square. It has its own adjoining private bathroom, with bath, shower, toilet and double handbasins.

Mackintosh is the larger bedroom, at 25 m square, and shares a bathroom across the hall.

Second floor

There are:

Two sunny and spacious double/twin bedrooms (Lilac and Pink), each with its own en suite facilities (WC, shower, handbasin), with superb views to the south.

The twin Green bedroom, also with its own en suite facilities, and with a westerly outlook.

Meals

Breakfast is served either in the dining room, or out on the terrace, overlooking the garden.

We offer you the same as we eat - freshly squeezed oranges (when in season); a fresh fruit salad with muesli and yogurt; baguettes and croissants, and espresso coffee or café au lait. Tea and porridge also available on request.

[For guests on courses and workshops: lunch and dinner are usually served down in the garden by the pool. There is also a poolside kitchen with barbecue.]

The nearby canalside restaurants serve salads, steak and chips, pizzas, etc. at lunchtime and in the evening. There are also French restaurants of a high standard of cuisine within a 10 or 15 minute drive of here.

Facilities

The 12.5 m pool is available to guests at certain times by arrangement, between May and September, but is unsupervised. The water should be at 23C or hotter during this period (up to 30C in high summer). There are poolside hot shower and toilet facilities.

The closed garage safely accommodates two or three guests' cars, in addition to our own. If you really have to stay in touch while on holiday, you are welcome to connect your laptop to our wireless broadband local network.

More about the house

La Fontenille has a sense of spaciousness which can't be reproduced adequately in photographs. It is kept cool in summer by following the tradition of closing the shutters to the linking key (loosely shut) during the day, to keep out the bright sunlight, but then opening up the windows at night to let in the cool night air. In contrast to modern double-glazed villas, air-conditioning is not necessary in summer, as long as this ritual is followed. Central heating is used in the cooler months - Mediterranean winters are surprisingly cold, but generally sunny.

The house was built by a Dr A. Fontenille in 1880, on the site of an existing building. The late nineteenth century was evidently a prosperous era in the Languedoc, but in 1905 it was ended by a wine-growing crisis. The home then passed into the hands of another family, who gradually sold off some of the land extending down to the canal. During the second world war the house was requisitioned by German officers.

In 1979 it was bought by a young French family of jewellers, who tastefully restored the house, and re-purchased an adjacent outbuilding to serve as a garage. We emigrated from Scotland in 2003, and bought this house, our home, in 2004.

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Puccini bedroom