Hôtel des Berges

More than a century ago, two brothers who made tyres in Clermont-Ferrand printed a little red guide to persuade motorists to drive further, and wear out their tyres a little faster. Over the decades it drew a gastronomic map of France, and its most legendary tables still run like a string of lights from Alsace down to the Mediterranean. At the head of that string, on the banks of the river Ill, sits the Auberge de l'Ill.

The Haeberlins have run this inn for more than a century and a half, and for gourmets it has the pull of a pilgrimage. From the road it looks every inch the Alsatian country inn. Inside, the designers Jouin Manku have made it modern and quietly lavish, with polished steel discs on one ceiling that mirror the river. Marc Haeberlin, the fourth generation at the stove, sets Alsatian classics beside dishes of his own. Even the street outside nods to the road south. It is named after Collonges-au-Mont-d'Or, the village near Lyon where Paul Bocuse kept his kitchen, and the two villages have been twinned for decades.

Behind the inn, a garden of weeping willows runs along the water, and a path leads through it to the Hôtel des Berges. Halfway, a long timber building comes into view, modelled on the old tobacco-drying barns of the plain and almost Japanese in its calm. Next to the old inn it ought to clash. Somehow it fits, as if the garden had been keeping a space for it. Danielle Haeberlin and her husband, Marco Baumann, run its rooms, around twenty of them, most named after famous cigars, with others in the old fisherman's house by the river and in the new wing.

What really makes the place, though, is the river. It is always there, wide and slow and close enough to hear, and it sets the pace for everyone. The garden is full of small corners made for doing nothing, a bench at the water's edge or a lounger half hidden beneath a willow, and somebody is usually asleep in one of them with a book open on their chest. The Spa des Saules and a heated pool add to the temptation, but the river is the real sedative.

Dinner is a stroll back through the garden, and afterwards nobody needs a car or even a coat. The next day can begin on the water. Breakfast arrives on a flat-bottomed boat, laid with a white cloth and a basket of warm bread, while someone at the stern steers it gently past the willows.

Illhaeusern itself is quiet and tiny, with Colmar and the wine route a short drive away. The restaurant closes on Mondays and Tuesdays, so a stay is best planned around it. The Hôtel des Berges is made for food lovers, and for couples who like the idea of falling asleep within earshot of a great kitchen and waking up beside a river.

The great road of French tables runs south, towards the sun, and most travellers save the grandest meal for the end of the journey. At Illhaeusern it comes first. And to judge by the guests dozing under the willows, very few are keen to get back in the car.