Holidays with kids often mean resetting and tweaking your expectations: staying in an apartment or villa can very much feel like same-drudgery-different-kitchen. Thoughts of late nights languishing in adorable town squares come punctuated with cries of boredom and demands to go inside and watch telly. Our usual self-catering flex while economical, had started to feel repetitive.
But how to add some seven-year-old-friendly glamour into a South of sojourn? Could a design-centric hotel offer something for us all? We – my daughter, husband and I – headed to the Luberon Valley to find out. Capelongue is an easy and only slightly meandering drive up from Marseille: you’re in the luscious valleys and hills here, but the roads gently rise up around the peaks rather than serving up too many perilous cliff-edges. The hotel - part of the Beaumier group (which is powered by the same private equity firm as The Pig portfolio) - sits on the edge of the village of Bonnieux which is around a fifteen minute walk away.
The village itself is one of those chocolate box Provençal gems, set across three picturesque levels (prepare to climb a little – the back streets are enchanting but steep) which are dotted with art galleries, plenty of upscale decent restaurants and organic, local epicerie stops for all your honey, lavender and soap essentials. Friday morning hosts the traditional market, with interant Brocante and seasonal evening markets, too. One way to engage a seven year old with .