Total Forest Seclusion At Loire Valley Lodges: Review

As children, my brothers and I each had a treehouse – homemade huts on stilts, eight feet high, that our family knocked together mostly to stop us bickering. Collectively they were known as The Stags, and each had a rope ladder you could draw up behind you so nobody could enter, which was rather the point. It was my first lesson in luxury: not marble or thread counts but height, privacy and the power to disappear. Thirty years on, at Loire Valley Lodges – a collection of 21 wooden treehouses perched four metres up among the oaks of a 300-hectare private estate near Tours – I disappeared all over again.

We came by Eurostar, St Pancras to Paris, breaking the journey with a night at La Bourdonnais – book the top-floor terrace suite – and dinner at Margaux, a retro-chic bistro on the Seine serving classics in style: bourguignon, escargots, crêpe Suzette flambéed tableside. The next morning, a TGV put the estate under two hours from the capital, with a 20-minute transfer into progressively deeper quiet. It felt like the honest way to arrive somewhere this serious about treading lightly.

Everything starts at the renovated farmhouse: it’s the check-in, but also a restaurant, bar and lounge with an open fire we commandeered one chilly afternoon, and a small shop selling house-made preserves, honey and an essential oil that captures the scent of the forest itself. From there the path slips past the pool and into the woods.

Accompanied by nothing but birdsong and the soft rush of air moving through leaves, I walked deeper in until Into the Wild appeared among the branches – clad, like all the treehouses here, in untreated Douglas fir that silvers over time to match the surrounding oaks and hornbeams. One of three new suites unveiled for the 2026 season, it is the work of Anne-Caroline Frey herself, who co-founded the property with her husband Bertrand and conceived this one as an homage to the photographer Peter Beard and the vast landscapes of Africa. 

Everything at Loire Valley Lodges asks to be touched – leather, hide, wood, velvet – and animal print prowls across every surface: a design safari, if you like, with stacks of wildlife photography books and a palette lifted straight from the savannah. The effect is unapologetic, and more than a little seductive; it’s the real wilderness pressing at the glass that keeps it the right side of pastiche.

And what a view. The window measures five metres wide by almost two and a half metres high, a single uninterrupted pane of glass – no joint, no seal, nothing to pollute what Frey calls ‘the contemplation of the painting’. It is the signature of every suite at Loire Valley Lodges, and from the king-sized bed you watch the world from the canopy – a show that reprograms itself by the hour, with the weather, with the light.

The Freys’ brief to architect Isabelle Poulain ran to five words: let the forest enter you. Everything flows from it. Each of the 21 lodges was handed to a contemporary artist with carte blanche: Charlélie painted a fresco of New York behind one bed; Aurèle wrote directly onto the chestnut walls; one suite is a shrine to Serge Gainsbourg, vinyl included; and two further newcomers, by artists David Sitbon and Thalia Lempert, complete this season’s trio. No two share furniture, colour or mood, and more art waits across the grounds: a life-sized rhinoceros, a giant golden skull shrouded in butterflies, a gallery gone gently feral.

Inside, the suites sprawl – and nothing about them is spartan. This is discreet, natural luxury, engineered to the millimetre: sliding doors that glide onto the terrace without a whisper, Egyptian cotton on the bed, a rain shower flanked by double sinks, Aesop and Leif on the shelf, the fluffiest white robes on the hook and a fridge stocked like a good hotel bar – champagne, red, white, beers, the lot. Every treehouse has a private jacuzzi on the terrace – heated to 37°C, body temperature, so that inside and outside blur – and six add a sauna. There is no television or wifi up here (ask nicely and you can connect in the farmhouse). If that sounds like deprivation, it isn’t. ‘Guests thank me,’ says Frey, ‘for the chance to have dinner for two – and not for four with the telephones.’

Then there’s the food. This season the property’s two restaurants have merged into Ardent Summer Session, a more relaxed fine-dining concept open daily for lunch and dinner – served back at the farmhouse, beside the pool, or in the aromatic herb courtyard, depending on the mood. The kitchen keeps up its long conversation between plants, fire and local produce, anchored to LaFerme – the estate’s own organic farm, barely a year old and already supplying the restaurant’s vegetables, herbs, edible flowers and poultry. 

© Geraldine Martens

The menu moves with the harvests: red tuna seared over binchotan charcoal, spelt risotto with charred leeks, monkfish with wild flowers, Noire du Berry chicken with buckwheat, and puddings built on foraged flavours – Scots pine, spruce, ground ivy. What united every plate was a whisper of vinegar: a bright thread of acidity that lifted the savoury dishes and cut clean through the sweetness of the desserts. It is, without exaggeration, the best food I’ve eaten all year. Drink the Clos Thierrière alongside – Vouvrays made by the Freys’ own sons, of which we tried several: almost viscous, all pear and silk, frankly ambrosial. The Michelin Guide awarded the property one of its inaugural Keys in 2024 – recognition of the stay as a whole, though the kitchen alone is worth the trip.

Breakfast arrives the next morning at the foot of the lodge in a basket you hoist up by pulley, and what a haul. Farm eggs, croissant loaf, estate honey, smoked salmon, sourdough and a shot of vitamin-rich birch sap tapped from the trees. Everything is exceptional, and there’s enough of it to graze on all day. A nifty little egg cooker in the suite lets you boil yours to exactly your liking, and with an espresso machine beside it, there’s no reason to descend before noon.

© Geraldine Martens

Days here dissolve easily: bicycles for the flat woodland paths, forest-bathing, in-lodge massages or the spa circuit – Nordic bath, pool (unheated), sauna, repeat – though I’ll confess the sauna wasn’t working during my visit, leaving the ritual a rather bracing affair. There is a world beyond, should you want it. Chenonceau is a short drive away, and the new Passion Experiences programme will build an itinerary around châteaux, gardens, golf or wine – but the pull of the estate is stronger.

Deep surrender happens in the Zome, a curious acorn-shaped structure of wood and glass dedicated entirely to acoustic wellness. Installed on a futon at its heart, I spent an hour being carried through a sound bath journey – singing bowls, waves, vibrations and voice – conducted by practitioner Emilie Demandre. By the final bowl, the soundscape had gained an unscheduled instrument: my fellow sound-bathers, taking it in turns to snore.

The Freys haven’t built a hotel with treehouses at all. They’ve built the thing my brothers and I were chasing all those years ago: the power to disappear, now with champagne on tap. Some things you never grow out of.

C&TH Key Notes

—Lodge to request: Into the Wild, Frey’s own Peter Beard-inspired suite – new for 2026, think Out of Africa with a hot tub. Six lodges also add a private sauna to the standard jacuzzi.

—Treatment to book: An hour-long sound bath in the Zome, the property’s acoustic temple (€110 for two). Don’t be surprised if you doze off – everyone does.

—Dish to order: Pudding, twice: the 72 percent Venezuelan chocolate tart we ordered on repeat, and a strawberry soup with rhubarb sorbet, meringue and spruce.

—Drink to order: Anything from Clos Thierrière, the Vouvray wine estate run by the Freys’ sons – we worked through several vintages and there wasn’t a dud among them.

—When to go: Summer for courtyard dining, autumn for the turning canopy, winter for the jacuzzi under bare branches. 

—Who to bring: Dogs are newly welcome – with VIP treatment.

The Last Word

Art-filled treehouses, forest-to-fork cooking and total seclusion, two hours from Paris. The châteaux have serious competition.

BOOK IT

Loire Valley Lodges from €350 per night including breakfast for two, loirevalleylodges.com