Mrs Helen Rixon: The property was lovely.

Mrs R. J. Stephenson: It was lovely.

Mr Edward Thompson: With its wonderful situation this villa is instantly welcoming and relaxing.

Ms Catrina Holme: Nestled in its own idyllic valley with no one but the buttermilk cows for company, La Fontaine, was the perfect French hide-away. Nearby Vergt was an unexpected gem, the slow pace of rural France, came to match our own relaxed selves.

Mrs Naomi Dobson: Stunning views and the perfect 'shabby chic' villa - beautiful but relaxing. Perfect for families.

It was with much trepidation that the various members of the Ellis clan arrived at Bergerac airport; we had attempted family holidays before, but something had always happened to turn them sour– illness, accidents, people leaving early or major arguments centred around the use of bathrooms and cooking facilities.

Many of us travelled on the same flight from Bristol, which was delayed by 5 hours. Although we resented our loss of valuable holiday time, it enabled my brother and sister-in-law to stock the kitchen and be blown away by La Fontaine before meeting us at the airport. They refused to tell us anything about the house, saying they wanted us to make up our own minds, and they were not disappointed by our reactions. The house is stunning and far more charming than photographs can convey. Two months on it still lives large in our imaginations and hearts.

We soon settled into an easy routine: before breakfast there were various runs (the Tom route for only the most committed, the Billy-bill-bill run for the less obsessed and the Hannah route which involved her getting hopelessly lost and search parties being sent out – she was found 6km away from the house heading in the wrong direction!) Someone would then do the croissant run into Vergt, this time by car.

Breakfast was a languid affair, terminated only when members of the group donned their half-chaps and headed for the excellent riding stables in Vergt. Then began the day’s serious business of swimming, sunbathing, reading and playing your matches in the long-running table-tennis championship (everyone paid 1 euro to enter; the winner got 12 euros. You’d be surprised how aggressively grown men played for such small stakes!) Before arriving, we had researched activities to do on days out, but once at La Fontaine we were loath to leave.

As the sun began to sink behind the house those of us whose turn it was to produce the evening meal were hard at work in the excellently equipped kitchen. As the week wore on the meals became ever more lavish, as we tried to out do each other. Because of the balmy August weather, we chose to eat all our meals at the long, candlelit table in the pool house from where we could hear the cicadas rasping and watch the vibrant voile curtains billow in the breeze that gently rippled the now still surface of the pool. After dinner there were more games and music from the huge and eclectic selection of CDs booming out of the powerful player. We could turn it up as high as we wanted; there was no house near enough to hear!

And so to bed, to dream of doing it all again tomorrow…

The hustle of Normandy with its recent battle history, sitting alongside the thousand-year-old Bayeux tapestry, the run down the empty autoroutes, broken only by random stops to pay tolls of 0.80 or 15 Euros, the winding through the last few miles of Dordogne roads to finish at a haven of peace and rural tranquillity. We were at a 17th century périgourdine farmhouse, just a few kilometres from Vergt. Inside the house, the stairs appeared to pre-date the house – we all learned which specific steps to avoid. The master bedroom had a touch of loucheness with a roll top bath and a toilet in the corner, open to all – the latter demanding slightly too much intimacy perhaps? Outside the best room is the converted open dovecote, where we could cook, eat and even wash up all three meals while looking over the next valley.  After particularly good meals, some members of the party collapsed into the hammock, thoughtfully hung in one corner, to wile away the afternoon, reading books.

The dovecote was also the scene each morning of the family jury’s assessment of the latest patisserie to be tried – Vergt has at least four which open on different days rather like a pharmacist’s rota so you can never be without breakfast.  The nearest did not seem to use butter in its croissants; the middle pair had the same selection of fluorescent-coloured cakes in the window for the whole week; and the furthest away was eventually voted the best overall.  Once this trial was over, we moved onto butchers – although this was easier as there are only two – old-fashioned shops with huge slabs of deep red meat, sliced to your order by jolly men in blood-smeared white coats using razor sharp knives. The organic butcher won this round as they provide name, rank and serial number of the animal they are slicing up for you, and even the field where the animal lived.

Vergt is the centre of strawberry-growing in France, an achievement marked by council-inspired laminated plastic strawberries hanging throughout the town. On our first morning the market was alive with the local (generally organic) producers in town – mostly fruit, vegetables, and olives. Later in the week the more, er, traditional French market arrived with cheap clothes, mattresses, CDs, watches, wine at 3 Euros a bottle (“We’ll deliver cases to Calais for your future orders”), plants, more cheap clothes, fish, cheese and olives. On Thursday the circus arrived. The street by the second best boulangerie had forlorn-looking camels and donkeys tied up in it, a nearby truck had a small lion lying on the floor while zebras advanced on us eagerly from another truck. A monkey sat in the town square, eating a banana. Back in the gîte, the jury prepares to deliberate on another range of bread and croissants before a morning of reading, sketching, swimming and table tennis – the perfect French experience.