![]() Finding an Armagnac producer where you can sample the amber-coloured drink is not a problem with around 1,000 producers in the area, it's more of a problem to choose which one to visit. This is Armagnac country, where the ripened fruit from vine-covered hills is distilled and transferred to oak barrels, and left to give off a heady aroma called the 'angel's share'. And who can blame them for loving this gently rolling land of sunflowers and vines, where ducks outnumber people by more than 20 to one and where British number plates are in a blessed minority? This is the perfect base to explore one of France's loveliest quarters, favoured on repeated visits by Tony, Cherie and the kids. Though we have no activities planned, we are not at a loss for things to do. 'And I can hire a two-Michelin star chef to cook.' ![]() 'Next month, I've got a group coming who are going to be doing everything from ballooning to star gazing,' he says. He is, of course, the mysterious harbinger of breakfast - everyone who stays at Le Castelnau des Fieumarcon gets a few goodies on arrival, though if you want to go the whole hog and hire the village with meals and activities laid on, he can do that too. It turns out to belong to owner Frederic Coustols, who has painstakingly restored the castelnau from the ruins he bought in the late Seventies, first renting it to local families and more recently to tourists, including wedding parties and family groups. We explore it again, almost jumping at the sound of another voice. When morning brings with it fresh bread and strawberries as if by magic, we happily consume them in our private garden, though the whole village is our back yard, with its view to the sea of green space that is Gascony. There are two bed rooms and bathrooms (which will presumably come in useful after those noisy rows) but the other 15 houses are of varying sizes, all with their own little extras - an ornamental trunk of a cherry tree struck down by lightning, beds set into wood alcoves, a piano placed by a window with a gorgeous view. ![]() So while the floors are in original tiles or wood, the rooms packed with old furniture, exposed timbers and open fireplaces, there are ornate canopies over the beds and enormous baths in the modern bathrooms. ![]() It opens on to a rustic style typical of French country houses, but with lots of comfortable trimmings. We walk down one of the two streets and up the other, still with muffled steps before - nervously lest we happen on someone else - trying our own front door. What we do is carry out a night-time perambulation of our kingdom in the light of stars so fierce they seem to be burning holes in the sky. It's a kind of isolation that comes with all sorts of possibilities - the chance to run around outside naked, to play music at full blast before the dawn chorus strikes up, to stage a rowdy argument without checking if anyone's in earshot. If you think the last-named sounds interesting, be ready to part with up to £330 each for several hundred guests and to share the place with 33,000 locals.Īt Le Castelnau des Fieumarcon, once a bustling community of several hundred people, there are no locals. It's unique despite the growing trend to take over whole places - castles, islands, even the tiny state of Liechtenstein. Let's face it, renting a whole village has to be the ultimate in travel one-upmanship, something to drop into the dinner-party conversation and watch the fumes of jealousy rise over the boeuf bourguignon.
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