For our recent holiday to Jard Sur Mer in the Loire Valley it was decided that we would break up the journey with an overnight stop rather than trying to cover the ten hour part of the French leg in a single day and as some of the group would have already endured a four and a half hour drive just to get to the Channel Tunnel we decided to stop somewhere just north of Paris which meant that the next day an early start would missing the worst of the Parisian traffic.

The hotel is also located close to Parc Asterix for those interested in visiting this theme park which apparently is well worth checking out according to my 13 year son who visited the park on a recent school trip earlier this year.

Check in is from 15.00 hours however we arrived an hour earlier and our room was available to us. Reception is small and is really part of the bar / restaurant and whilst the person who served us was very polite my lack of French and their lack of English did cause a bit of confusion as the booking was not in my name. In fact the lack of an English speaking staff in the hotel did make ordering food difficult and it was lucky that a couple of people in our group were reasonable French linguists.

Our room was clean and a reasonable size however it was supposed to be a family room so it was a bit worrying to only see a double bed and a single bed that was wheeled out from beneath the double bed. Once this was in position it effectively blocked the access to the bathroom meaning a late night trip to the toilet involved you walking over whoever was in that bed.

There was plenty of storage space and the bed itself was very comfortable however there were only three pillows in the room and these had all seen better days however this was not a major issue as we had our own pillows in the car which we used.

The Food

The breakfast was very good with a large buffet to choose from which had a good variety of food to choose from, lots of fresh fruit, cereals, bread, meats, cheese, yoghurts and pastries as well as four kinds of croissant. It was help yourself and you could make as many trips as you liked and the buffet was constantly replenished.

On the return journey we ordered from the main menu which when combined with the buffet bought the meal price on average to about 20 euro however the quality of the meals was much better and the choice was a lot more inclusive of different tastes although like many restaurants in France vegetarians were poorly catered for.

One thing I did not like was the fact that they allowed dogs in the hotel and even in the restaurant. In particular given that people in France do not understand the concept of cleaning up after their muts there was some dog crap around the place which is not acceptable.

I would certainly look at alternatives if needing a similar stop over in the future however I would go back if there were no other alternatives.