Castel Bois Marie

Castel Bois Marie is a late eighteenth-century family house on the edge of Montauban, in the Tarn-et-Garonne. The red-brick building with its towers, carefully rebuilt in the mid-twentieth century and restored again after the 2015 tornado, stands in four hectares of parkland with two-hundred-year-old cedars and a pond fed by a natural spring.

Since 2018 the house has welcomed guests as a 5 épis maison d'hôtes, with seven rooms, each named after a member of the family. In the warmer months guests use the heated saltwater pool, the veranda and the garden; central Montauban is a few minutes' drive away and Toulouse about 35 minutes.

The house is run by Axelle Fernandez-Marciel and her father Xavier, with a small team. Guests are welcomed in person between 6 and 7.30 pm; for arrivals at other times a self check-in with instructions specific to each room is available. French and English are spoken.

Free private parking with electric vehicle charging, a bar, Wi-Fi throughout the property and a shuttle service at extra cost. Pets are welcome; the property is entirely non-smoking.

The seven rooms and suites carry the names of those who lived in the house: Natalina, with a balcony over the lake and pool; Avelino, a junior suite with floral frescoes and a marble bathroom; Marie-Louise, a suite in one of the towers looking over the park and countryside; Poupette, the largest, with a sitting room, four-poster bed and wide balcony. The others are smaller rooms, some beneath the roof.

Period furniture in Louis XIV, Renaissance or Napoleonic style, high ceilings and small-paned windows. Each room has a private bathroom with shower and toiletries, air conditioning, flat-screen TV, coffee machine and free Wi-Fi.

Castel Bois Marie has no restaurant open to the public. Breakfast is homemade, served as a buffet and taken on the veranda overlooking the pond; special dietary requirements can be catered for on request.

On some evenings the family opens its own table to guests, by reservation and never on Saturdays. For other dinners the hostess is glad to book a table in Montauban, including Cantarossa, the family's restaurant, or in nearby Montech.

Montauban, a town of art and history on the Tarn, has the arcaded brick Place Nationale and the Musée Ingres Bourdelle, about 7 km from the house. Toulouse is around 35 minutes by car and Toulouse-Blagnac airport about 50 km away.

Nearby are the Garonne canal with its cycle-friendly towpaths and the Montech water slope, the abbey of Moissac with its Romanesque cloister, about 30 minutes away, and Albi, with Sainte-Cécile cathedral, about an hour's drive.