About us

We are Claire and Jacques

Claire is an active private nurse and Jacques a former construction executive. We have been staying in lodges and bed and breakfasts for a long time. As early as 1984, our honeymoon took us to Lake Constance and the Deutshalpenstrasse, where we extensively enjoyed the zimmer frei. Later, it was England, and its Bed & Breakfasts. Then, during a journey to Italy with our daughters we discovered agroturismo nearby San Sepulcro in Tuscany. Of course, we have also travelled all over France, staying in “chambres d’hôtes”. 

These experiences, and our love of meeting new people, convinced us that we too could offer this kind of hospitality to tourists from all over the world, to those who are looking for a housing which is different, more intimate, warmer, and closer to the local people of the region you’re visiting. 

We’re in love with the Rhône-Alpes region, and more specifically the Bugey area, and we just wanted to share this passion with others. 

So, in july 2014, it made perfect sense for us to actually put to paper our vision of what a Bed and Breakfast could be, through an architectural project and a structured business plan. 

As children of the “Trente Glorieuses” (the post WW2 30 year boom), we feel a kind of nostalgia for this carefree and creative era. That’s why we tried, through this architectural project, to evoke the aesthetic codes from the postwar era, up until the 1970s.  

Our house was first designed around a few category-based imperatives. It had to be a single-storey house so that the contact with nature would be permanent, wherever inside the house you may be, never with anything more than french windows separating you from the outside. These french windows are fitted with automated sun-breakers, screening the light depending of the sun’s energy input. 

We also wanted a house that would be organised around a patio, not unlike the Andalusian haciendas. It is both great for regulating heat and creating an intimate space for the family to meet with friends for lively dinner parties. 

With these two imperatives in mind, we had to organise the different functions around this central hub. Welcoming the guests, the private area with our bedroom and our children’s bedroom when they come to visit, a large room divided into the open kitchen, the dining room and the living room where all can gather around a good homemade meal.  

Connected to the large living room would be the three rooms with their 70s style. After taking a dip in the outdoor pool in Summer, or the swim lane the rest of the year, you would enjoy spending time on their west or south-facing private terraces. The swim lane would be part of a well-being area, with a fitness room and a sauna, that loops back to the house entrance. 

Once we had a solid business plan and a well established project, we had to find the place to make it happen. In July 2014 we surveyed one hundred and twenty economic players from the greater East of Lyon, around the Saint-Exupéry airport.

We identified a dozen options, and eventually chose the Tissot estate in Saint-Jean-le-Vieux. It would welcome our project without us making any architectural or functional concessions, and it had obvious assets : a huge park with about a hundred centennial trees, existing premises that would be very useful for the moving-in operations to come, and most of all, the river Oiselon, which lends a romantic charm to the estate. It is also a very efficient temperature controller in this wall-bound estate. 

In April 2015 we signed the sale agreement, and acquired the estate late 2015. The renovation of the lodges took place in 2016. We started building the house in July 2017, and finished it in the Summer of 2018.