What the Papers Say

From The Sunday Times
March 18, 2007
Canvas chic in France
Vincent Crump

Vincent Crump checks in at France’s poshest camp site. In an enchanted land, not so distant from here, there is a far, far forest where curious things happen. The woodland folk dwell not in cottages but inside domes of glowing white lights. They are a happy band, and they don’t even mind when a pesky fox named Pierre comes on his evening raids, purloining their shoes to carry home to his den.

Some say that Mille Etoiles was created by Ruth Lawson, but I think Enid Blyton might have had something to do with it. Set among the magic faraway trees of the Ardèche plateau, last gasp of the Massif Central before it tips towards the Med, this is Europe’s most surprising camp site — an artful arrangement of 12 creamy Mongolian yurts that shine incongruously in the silver and olive fastness of a far-flung French oak wood.

In the role of Blyton’s clattery Saucepan Man is Ruth’s partner, Lodewijk, or Luds, dispensing pots and pans to the kitchen tents or tripping through the trees with armfuls of logs for the barbecue. And Silky the Fairy is played with absolute aplomb by little Evie, the couple’s four-year-old, who each night at sundown gathers visiting sprites from around the camp to help her sprinkle twinkly pink lanterns along the woodland tracks, lighting the route between the yurts and the dining terrace.

Mille Etoiles opened last Easter, after Ruth and Luds fell in love with what they call “the special energy” of the Ardechois forest. “I’ve always loved the thrill of sleeping under canvas,” Ruth explains. “I asked Luds if he liked camping on our first date! But I didn’t see why you should have to sacrifice comfort and style to do it. We’d visited smart safari camps in Africa, and thought, ‘Let’s try that here.’ ” What transformed business plan into fairy tale, though, was their genius idea to erect not boring old tents but weird new yurts — the squashed-top tepees favoured by Mongolian nomads. Before you could say Jacques Robinson, their embryonic encampment was being touted by style mags and colour supplements as a trailblazer of “camping cool”. That’s an image encouraged by canvaschic.com, the couple’s rather succulent website, with its lush promises of “private relaxation areas”, “exotic bathing spaces” and all manner of “natural luxury”.

For me, though, the sell is a bit skewwhiff. We arrived under gale-whipped, gunmetal skies, knackered after a tortuous two-hour drive from Lyons airport, and I have to say I was underwhelmed. Reception seemed to be a barrack-like building in yellow render; the parasols on the sun terrace were losing their battle with the wind; and the children’s facilities amounted to a deserted swing-slide combo on a scrappy square of ground.

Then Luds led us through the woods to our lodgings, and instantly I got it. The yurts are hand-woven cones of oak and ash, each elevated above bug level on a pine platform, with a besom broom, a picnic table and a hammock for alfresco shuteye. And yes, it’s true, Ruth has decked them out with an artist’s eye — you get chunky country-French cabinets and Moroccan candle lanterns, sundry “ethnic” wall hangings, deep crimson bed linen and towels as thick as your thumb, all scented with fresh air, linseed oil and creamy canvas. Who would choose a hotel room over this?

But it’s not trimmings that make the place, it’s atmosphere. The minute we stepped inside the yurt, I felt the enveloping calm Ruth had tried to describe when we phoned to book — how the interplay of curvaceous space and shafting sunlight shapes your mood. It’s cocoon-like. There is the slowness and simplicity of the bosky setting, the twig-snap and the birdsong, but also the outlandishness of the yurts, the kindness of your hosts and the exclusive feel you get from sharing this strange oasis with just 20 or so kindred spirits.

That night, Ruth introduces us to Neil, Lucy, Adam and Lizzie, from Stratford; and to David and Sam and their daughter, Jess. By evening two, we are clubbing together over beers, boules and an all-muck-in barbie. We’ll be seeing less of Mike and Sally, who are sans enfants, and occupy one of the “honeymoon” tents couched somewhere beyond the main clearing. Presumably, they spend most of their stay exploring the mysterious sexual energy imparted by the yurt.

For youngsters, there is no electricity on site and nothing much to do except menace small mammals in the forest, wave torches at trees or dangle off rope ladders in the dinky playground. Bizarrely, they appear to love all this. Like Blyton’s children escaping into the Enchanted Wood, they are free to go feral, and even my daughter, Daisy, very much a teen in training, is soon hanging out in hammocks and marauding through the undergrowth with her small posse of peers. We nickname them the Mille Etoiles Massif.

Of course, the camp site has one other secret, lurking at the end of a skinny pathway through the trees: the Ardeche gorge itself. Perhaps, like me, you’ve visited the Dordogne or the Lot, pretty valleys for sure — but here geology has scrunched itself into much tighter folds, contorting the river into a narrow limestone gully several hundred feet below the plateau. And it turns out that Mille Etoiles is bang on the balcony above the canyon.

We tackle the 20-minute scramble down a steepish earth track to the river — not great if you’re toting toddlers, probably, but a dream for older families. The view throws off its cloak of branches at the last moment — to reveal our own private meander of turquoise river, where we get to swim in the pellucid water, dart with shrimping nets after baby trout and dive-bomb off the ice-white crags that gang up on the channel.

That was good for three days’ excitement at least, and when we fancied sharing the idyll with others, we drove to the “beach” at Pont d’Arc, a sensational rock archway vaulting the river. We enjoyed a sensuous Saturday market under the medieval arches of Uzes; outings to the Tuscan-type hill town of Barjac; and a memorable grapple with the racier reaches of the river, on a two-person kayaking jaunt out of touristy Vallon. Daisy still contends that I’m the one who steered us sideways into “dead man’s rapids” — which is fine. I know the truth of the matter.

You can cave, canoe and bivouac in the gorge, too, but, for us, crashing a kayak into a cliff was more than enough thrills for one week. Mostly, our days unravelled languidly in the sun-spattered clearings at Mille Etoiles, broken only by hide-and-seek with Evie, scorpion hunts around the shower block (we really did find one, too small and too dead to do anybody any damage) and countless cheese-and-wine runs to Labastide de Virac, a dozing hamlet featuring a deserted 15th-century chateau, the marvellous Petite Auberge restaurant and a farm shop where (joy!) they don’t speak English.

At dusk, after helping Saucepan Man clear away the pots and scattering lanterns with Silky, we would put the world to rights with Ruth, Luds and our fellow dome-dwellers, and finally peel the nose cone off the top of our yurt and lie back in bed to count our portion of the “thousand stars”. Except, that is, on the night when Pierre the Fox came calling. Luds had warned us that shoes had been going missing from outside the yurts, and a fox was suspected. “It seems to like Birkenstocks best,” he’d said. But we didn’t expect Pierre to join us in person on our deck, after supper, for cheese and biscuits. We probably shouldn’t have encouraged him, but nature holidays don’t get much more interactive than fraternising with your own forest fox, so we shared our jambon with him. It wasn’t enough: next morning, Daisy’s trainers were gone. Not to worry, though. For us, meeting Pierre typified the specialness of Mille Etoiles, much more so than the “exotic bathing spaces” or “private relaxation zones”.

Our stay had given us a whole new take on barefoot luxury.