The B&Bs that stand for Bonkers & Beguiling!

Sick to death of holidays that all seem the same? Then escape with legendary travel author ALASTAIR SAWDAY to the world’s most joyously eccentric guest houses

W ITH the sound of Charolais cattle lowing under my window, I awoke under a plump eiderdown duvet to the unmistakeable whiff of French coffee.

Tumbling down the creaking wooden staircase into the kitchen, I found a large table loaded with jars of homemade jam and baguettes.

Grandpere sat in the corner, nursing a bowl of coffee, beret tilted back from a bemused face, while his daughter fussed about eagerly.

A pair of ducks wandered in and helped themselves to breakfast from the floor. This was my idea of the perfect B&B. Yet for many holiday-makers, the mere mention of the phrase ‘bed and breakfast’ can spark distant memories of hatchet-faced landladies in grim boarding houses, net curtains twitching, Nescafe brewing, nylon sheets, hushed breakfast rooms, congealed fried eggs, UHT milk, sagging mattresses — and not forgetting trouser-presses.

My travelling life began as a boy in the early Fifties. It seems astonishing now, but for my first holiday abroad, my family took our car — on a plane.

We drove our Ford Consul onto a Bristol Freighter transport plane at Lydd airfield in Kent and parked it beside two other vehicles.

This was an adventure for anyone, let alone an impressionable boy. Passengers sat behind their cars, while the aircrew climbed a ladder to the flight deck above.

After landing at Le Touquet on the north French coast, we drove off and quickly found ourselves in a queue of traffic.

Other drivers seemed unperturbed: there was no bleating of horns, no curses. After a minute my father, in his flat tweed cap, ambled down ahead to see what the delay was, and reported back to us that a lorry driver had stopped in the middle of the road for a pee. My mother told us: ‘He’s just being French’ — a hint that the world beyond British shores was often very different in unexpected ways.

Something in me thrilled to this idea — and still does.

Throughout my career as a writer and traveller, I’ve done all I could to avoid the trouserpress establishments and seek out the breakfasting ducks.

I once led a tour for 12 brave Americans. Beginning in the Lot valley, we swept down to the Pyrenees mountains and to Montsegur with its old Cathar castle.

We plucked figs as we lay beneath the trees drinking wine and picnicking. This was a rather charming way to earn a living.

Indeed, I grew to love many of my clients. One, Alberta, in her late 80s, became a favourite. She had a neatly wrinkled face and twinkling eyes. If I asked how she was, she would reply: ‘ I’m just perking along.’

Then she broke her leg and tearfully arranged to fly home early. I couldn’t bear to lose her, and insisted she stay and allow me to care for her. So tiny was she that, even with her plaster cast, I could carry her upstairs and onto the ramparts of the 15th-century Chateau de Langeais.

We became devoted friends and she lived to 102, ‘perking along’ to the last.

Since most travellers occasionally feel lonely or outof-place, it’s inevitable that there’s a frisson of excitement at a warm connection with a waiter or guide, a taxi-driver or a shopkeeper.

So to be kindly invited into someone’s home for a chat with a friendly local can add vital spice to a holiday.

This we achieved by using friends as hosts — meaning we had experiences such as lunching with a beekeeper, digging up carrots and dining in farmhouses.

Such trips became so popular that I began publishing guides to favourite stop-overs, where the people you met mattered more than the facilities. We aimed to resist the platitudes of the AA guide. Rather than concentrate on ‘sacred’ factors such as tidiness, depth of shag on carpet and towel sizes, we ignored them.

What mattered was a place’s amiable chaos, character and unpredictability.

Because we set out to be different, we maintained a light touch with our descriptions. For example, the handbook for France featured such translations in French for ‘our tap is dripping’ and ‘are there always chickens in the bedroom?’.

Our editors wrote as human beings, even when describing something as superficially banal as ‘accommodation’ (a grim word in itself). The aim was to replace travel agent cliches with a little colour, and we developed a list of banned words and phrases such as ‘nestling’, ‘picturesque’ and ‘a perfect base from which to explore … ’

For the first book, we found 450 special places. We were eclectic in our choices — tolerant of the vague and the downright dotty.

The houses, many of them farms, were a mixed bag and so were the owners, such as one couple whose chateau resembled an 18th- century wedding cake built on medieval foundations.

These chatelains tended to be obsessed with rules and formality.

Typically, the husband would talk endlessly of the family’s former glories, and how they fitted into the web of European aristocracy, citing many learned essays that traced their lineage.

Dinner was a jacket-and-tie affair, where guests had to use the correct cutlery and put their glass in the right spot on the table. Such tyrannical etiquette may well have been fun to write about, but it was less fun to experience. So, after a couple of editions, we cut such places from the guide.

There were many more rewarding people to meet. For example, there was a memorable host in Brittany. She hustled me and my wife, Em, into her small sitting room and disappeared to the kitchen

My family took our car abroad — on a plane

to get what we imagined would be cups of coffee.

Back she came with a bottle of dark red liquid: ‘I know you English drink port,’ she said, ‘for I have read it in novels.’

Another, a frail lady in her 80s, had a 12th- century chateau of ravishing beauty and many turrets, but she was too ancient to get up the stairs. So I made my own bed and tidied the room.

The stairs were, indeed, demanding — made entirely of stone and worn concave by the feet of many centuries, the sort you feel your way down gingerly in fear of encountering a knight rushing up in chainmail. Having descended, I looked forward to a medieval-sized breakfast, but poor Madame lay slumped in a chair.

‘Ah, sir,’ she murmured weakly in French. ‘I’m so terribly old that I don’t have the energy to make your breakfast. But the kitchen is there . . .’ Making my own bed and breakfast was certainly a small price to pay for such an experience. I even cooked a meal for Madame, and we ate it happily together at her oak table.

Often, our clients had experiences just as odd.

A Dutch couple told us they had arrived at a crumbling Irish manor house around teatime, and were greeted by their hostess wearing a bikini. She told them to put down their suitcases and follow her.

After setting off in puzzled pursuit of their scantily dressed hostess, they were joined by another group of guests who were all carrying lighted candles.

This bizarre procession finally arrived in a small field and was gathered into a circle. All was revealed: they had been summoned to attend a ceremonial burial. The deceased was madam’s cat.

But the bikini remained a mystery.

A very different problem arose high in the hills of Provence, up a long track and with the most glorious views.

It was a place of idyllic peace — until our bucolic illusions were derailed by the host family, who emerged from their kitchen after dinner… to play rock music. Mum was on bass, Dad on electric guitar, the boys on drums and guitar. Their music was electrifying and ear-splitting.

At the other end of the scale was an elegant hostess who played a Bach prelude on her cello while we had an aperitif before dinner.

On another occasion, the music was entirely imaginary.

I was in the Languedoc with a small wine-tasting group, visiting a house that was a riot of arches, shutters, cellars and red tiling. Its owners, Monsieur and Madame Bourgain, ushered ten of us into the kitchen to sit for a glass of their own red wine — even though there were only six chairs. The rest of us sat cross-legged on the floor.

Monsieur, who was in his 80s, pottered back and forth with bottles which were opened in quick succession.

Madame was unexpectedly bibulous, especially for a woman in her 70s, and as the evening wore on she revealed that she had, in her youth, spent a winter in Scotland as a hotel maid. She said she had danced every Saturday night in the village hall.

Madame then disappeared — only to return ten minutes later in Scottish regalia, the dress under heavy strain from the pounds added since her time in Scotland. She meandered around the kitchen looking for swords, which came in the shape of ancient pokers.

With a flourish she quietened us, and the magic of the occasion filled our ears with the imaginary sound of bagpipes. We all watched her, entranced, as she skipped nimbly about the pokers.

After a glorious, swirling minute, she tottered across the room and fell, sozzled, into the lap of one of my elderly clients. He was both delighted and alarmed, as Madame’s dress gave up its struggle to contain her fullness.

The man’s wife looked on as he disappeared under the weight of an increasingly exposed French farmer’s wife.

For his part, Monsieur, unperturbed, continued to serve the wine.

My delight in the stories behind food and wine has sometimes led to other kinds of embarrassment.

In one glorious chateau, my wife and I met the kindly Madame Roget, who warmly invited us to share a glass of her ‘special’ drink at a table in the garden. She

disappeared into a cellar and then emerged beaming, clutching a bottle of her own fine organic walnut wine.

I took a sip and exclaimed: ‘ Ah Madame, quel plaisir de boire du vin sans preservatif!’

I thought I was praising her for making wine without chemical additives (‘what a pleasure to drink wine without preservatives’), but one look at her startled and bemused expression told me that I had definitely muddled my French vocabulary.

The French word ‘preservatives’ translates as ‘condoms’!

France, of course, doesn’t have a monopoly on B& Bs run by wonderful characters. There are many much closer to home.

Among my many favourites is one on a hill farm in the Black Mountains, just inside the Welsh border. The farmer, John (who learned to build dry-stone walls at 14) became in need of a companion. So a friend duly decided to put his photo in the infamous Farmer Wants A Wife section of Country Living magazine.

It attracted 70 responses, but it was the response from a woman called Niki that won the day.

She duly drove to the farm in a 2CV sagging under the weight of her possessions, and then simply never left.

‘Our lives,’ she now says, ‘ run along slow principles. Our cows, goats, sheep, geese and pigs roam free over acres of organic pastureland. They live and grow at their own pace.’

The couple had children, who run wild — safe and free, too — and visitors often succumb to the urge to do the same.

However, life hasn’t been quite so relaxed for Richard and Sheila, who run a hotel- turned- B& B called Fingals, near Totnes in Devon. It is more like a country house party than a mere place to stay — dotty but wonderful. Meals last as long as the conversations.

But when their treasure of a French chef died (after keeling over while playing a pub fruit machine), Fingals suffered prolonged staffing problems. They had one disastrous chef after another, including one who drank himself insensible in the hotel bar on his first night.

In desperation, Richard contacted a catering magazine to place an ad which read: ‘ Chef required. Small family hotel seeking a chef to run our kitchen (into the ground). Must intimidate our young trainee staff and generally whip them out of shape.

‘The successful applicant should ideally be an alcoholic or a drug addict, and must be a chain smoker. Must be able to pre-cook everything and then heat it up to order. Accommodation can be provided, to make our lives hell 24/7.

‘Wage can be supplemented with kickbacks from suppliers,’ it continued. ‘ No notice required when leaving, just a scribbled note left on the kitchen table — preferably on a busy evening.’

The magazine refused to print their advert.

Of course, eccentricity is in the eye of the beholder. Take, for instance, a Tuscan castle owned by an Italian called Marcello. It stands on the edge of a nature reserve, at the bottom of a very steep track.

I found colourful cushions scattered throughout the stone building, candles flickering in niches and a log fire blazing in the giant hearth, while gentle music filled every corner.

Upstairs, there were 14 bedrooms, each a monk’s cell, but fashioned with a clever combination of austerity and luxury. These were definitely not double rooms.

‘Many couples like to go away separately, to charge their batteries without each other, so these rooms are for singles,’ Marcello explained. ‘To hell with market research — this is what people need!’

Real travellers open themselves up to such experiences and just plunge in.

The happiest are those who travel lightest, completely free of any preconceived ideas or fat suitcases. And, best of all, they travel slowly.

In a bikini, she took her guests to her cat’s burial The sozzled hostess danced a Highland jig