Les Sources de Cheverny

The most useful thing Les Sources de Cheverny lends its guests may be a pair of rubber boots. They are meant for mushroom hunting in the forest, and they are a fair summary of the place. This is a country hotel in the Loire Valley, close to the château of Cheverny, where an old manor and its farm buildings share a clearing with new wooden cabins around a pond. Forty-five hectares of woods and orchards surround the lot. The luxury mostly happens outdoors, and some of it involves mud.

The couple behind it, Alice and Jérôme Tourbier, made their name with Les Sources de Caudalie among the vines near Bordeaux, then chose this old royal hunting country in the Sologne for something wilder. What they built works like a very comfortable village. Getting here takes a car, but once parked it can stay put for days while guests borrow bikes to ride from their rooms to dinner. Beyond the manor, the long outdoor pool is lined in green so that it passes for a pond, which means even the swimming pretends to be nature.

Picking a room means picking a mood. The thirteen in the manor have creaking parquet and views of the trees, and they are worth asking for early by anyone after a dose of history. The rest are in the farm buildings and the cabins, where pale wood meets flea-market finds. Their names come from the surrounding countryside, such as the Bees' Barn, and the bees are real: their honey turns up in the restaurant.

The signature suite is called Le Baron Perché, the French title of Italo Calvino's novel about a young nobleman who, after a family row over a plate of snails, climbs a tree and refuses ever to come down. The suite stands above the pond, with orchard views from the terrace and a private Nordic bath. After an evening up there, the baron's decision seems entirely reasonable.

Evenings end at L'Auberge, a big stone room with old beams and long wooden tables, where chickens turn slowly on the spit beside the fire. In season, wild mushrooms come baked in a tart. Guests who spent the day stomping through the woods in their borrowed boots may arrive with a pocketful of their own finds, and then, very sensibly, let the chef do the picking.

The obvious outing is a bike ride to the château of Cheverny, which Hergé borrowed for Captain Haddock's Marlinspike Hall. Most days, its hundred or so hunting hounds are fed in front of visitors, and the meal is gone in about the time it takes to raise a phone. Children tend to rank this well above the tapestries. Les Sources is made for families like theirs, and for couples who prefer their châteaux with a walk in the woods attached, as long as nobody minds Loire prices with a Bordeaux accent. The hotel closes in January.

When guests leave, the boots tend to come back caked in forest. Most grand hotels would frown at that. Here it is a compliment to the house.