Wined, dined and rested.

When I booked a stay at Transhumance et cie. in little Bedous in the French Pyrenees I didn’t realise that it had once been the tiny town’s railway station, or that the occasional small train still stops about 50 metres up the line from where this gorgeous place is. 

When you get there you really can’t avoid the TRAIN theme, but not in a nerdy kind of way (well, may be a bit….) but in a really sweet way that just makes you smile at every turn. Reception for example has been made to look like (maybe it was?) a ticket office but in a ‘wry smile’ kind of way, thus:

Look at that wonderful between-the-wars font!

Then at breakfast (I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, but it’s the THEME) you sit and look at this:

And when we chose to have the delicious raclette at dinner, it was presented attached to a miniature re-imagined goods wagon with hot coals in it …..

… which actually did an excellet job of melting the cheese, while retaining the train-themed integrity of the place.

Each little part that you discover puts another smile on your face; it’s clearly been done with love and affection and that is infectious.  (Did I say “every way”? Mmmm, not quite. MAJOR RANT alert, but more of that later.)

Bedous itself is a mountain village in the glorious valley of the Aspe, one of the prettiest routes up into the Pyrenees if you are heading for Spain. The surrounding mountains are breaktakingly beautiful, and we were lucky that the sun shone for us (France at the time of travelling was suffering from floods and storms in most areas).

You can tell this little hotel is a station as soon as you see it – all French country stations were clearly designed by the same person – and of course it still has its official name on it.

Our room was simple and beautifully done, with the most amazing view from the window; they have even built in a window-seat with a cushion that just makes you want to pick up the nearest book and tuck yourself in for a long read with frequent leisurely pauses to drink in the sight of the valley outside. Damn, if only I’d brought my copy of War and Peace.

The wall behind the bed nods to left-luggage lockers, and again you smile as you appreciate it. Somehow it just works.

Like the rest of the place, the bathroom is spotlessly clean and newly done. No train theme here, but you do have to be an Olympic athlete or a contortionist to climb into the bath for a shower because the bath is set into a deep alcove leaving you very little room to manoeuvre your way over the edge and into the cavern…. and why do French hotels so often have that silly short hose on the shower head NOT up high on the wall but rather at stomach/chest level? No, this isn’t my rant, that’s still to come….this is just a minor niggle. Fortunately both of us escaped without major injury or dislocation while still managing to ablute sufficiently.

Oh, and the palm trees…. We went for a stroll round the village, soaking in the atmosphere of the stone buildings and narrow streets, and there they were, next to the castle and opposite the church. They should have seemed out of place but they didn’t; like so much else in this place they just make you smile.

And mountains everywhere, in all directions.

Of course I knew there were going to be mountains in the Pyrenees, I am skilled, talented and immensely knowledgeable about geography ( … not …), but they still make me go “wow” every time I’m in them.

Back in the hotel we had a drink in the sun on what had been the platform,

then later admired the wooden-beamed dining room as we enjoyed our delicious raclette, made with local cheese, and tried to imagine the space as the waiting room, full of posters and timetables and backpackers travelling up into the mountains to go hiking.

We had a good Jurançon sec – as near as we could get to a regional wine – to go with a platter of local charcuterie first, then the raclette.

Our sleep was the sleep of the virtuous, and the morning’s view from our window was of the sun rising on the mountains.

Sigh. As Mary Berry might say, it doesn’t get much better than that.

We had decided to have breakfast in the hotel, against our normal habit of just finding a lovely boulangerie and taking a bag of burstingly fresh croissants to the nearest little café for a magnificent cup of café au lait, a habit that is usually far more pleasant, and always much cheaper than having a hotel breakfast. But oh dear.

I’m not oh-dear-ing about the breakfast itself, not really; it was a pretty good version of a buffet breakfast and of course easy to manage for the very hardworking young couple who run this place.

But wait…… and now you have to start imagining that scary soundtrack from Psycho or Jaws getting louder and LOUDER as you see…

…. one of those hideous push-button coffee machine, beloved of so many small and medium-sized hotels the world over. NOOOOOOOOOOOO !

Why?  Oh my dear heaven, WHY? The liquid they produce is tepid and mildly unpleasant and is NOTHING LIKE COFFEE. Like the narrator in Jacques Prévert’s “Déjeuner du matin” I just put my heoad in my hands and I sobbed.  I wonder if Jacques Prévert had had an unfortunate experience with a hotel coffee machine? That would explain the tragic air to his poem….

However, I can be generous-spirited and kind because I really did love this hotel in these beautiful surroundings. I wholeheartedly admire the work that has gone in to making this delightful station a joyful and uplifting place to stay because I am an adult of a certain age who has learned to put life’s disappointments into context. I will place the tragedy of the dastardly coffee machine to one side and say I would definitely stay at Transhumance et cie. again, but I would pointedly bring my own cafetière down to breakast and just ask for boiling water. (I have done that before at another hotel that I loved very much except for this same hideous crime – the owner just looked desperately disappointed and walked off shaking his head. Later that year he retired. I’ve always felt a little guilty about that.)

So yes, go to this lovely place satisfied in your soul that wineddinedandrested gives it the full 5 stars. Just take your own coffee.