Forest View

Yorkshire exiles Pete and Karen Wilson took over ForestView in 2005 and have transformed the wilderness they found into a comfortable, easy- going site that lies by a quiet crossroads between the edge of the Forêt de Saussay and a landscape of gently rolling farmland. While the forest is huge and forms a significant part of the Parc Naturel Régional du Perche, the site itself could easily be called LakeView because it’s the reflections in the fishing lake that most people love to gaze at.
 
The lake is stocked with rudd, roach, pike, and tench, but there’s a firm no-killing policy, so even if you land a giant carp it must go back in the water. There’s crazy golf and a small pool in the orchard to dip into, but most people come here to ride horses or bikes, to paint, watch birds, or walk in the woods of tamarisk and hawthorn. Perhaps they are thinking of Proust as they do so – the town of Illiers- Combray, where he used to spend the summer and which provided the setting for Swann’s Way, is 20 miles (32 km) to the south-east. This region is often bypassed in the rush to get south to the Loire and the Dordogne. It’s a land of forests, ancient abbeys, and fortified manors with massive circular towers and beautiful gardens. The area is famous for its lace, its powerful Percheron horses, and for unspoilt thousand-year-old villages such as Chapelle- Montligeon, where an early-20th-century, gothic revival cathedral, Notre-Dame de Montligeon, rises somewhat bizarrely above the fields. And it’s known for its wonderful cider and hospitality, both of which can be sampled when you get back to camp.