Look at the map. St Amand Montrond is bang in the middle of France and an apparently convenient stopover on the way out or on the way back. We found this place on a Michelin website (not their Red guide) and in the Gault-Millau Guide. It seemed to be the French ideal - a solid, traditional hotel in the middle of a solid, traditional town, with shutters, a courtyard, a bourgeois restaurant and sensible prices. And so it might have been, 20 or even 10 years ago, when the British hordes drove across France, before cheap-flights sounded the death knell to places like this. At night St Amand Montrond was deserted.

The De La Poste was seriously run-down, with dank rooms (admittedly only 50 Euros) and a surly owner who abruptly closed his restaurant because there were only two other diners, also with a reservation. It was awful and it was also just terribly sad, summed up by the terribly aged and arthritic dog that regularly took a turn in the courtyard, defecated and pee'd on the... more