In 1682, Louis XIV told his courtiers they were moving from Paris to Versailles.
They laughed at him, although very quietly, in case they lost their heads.
Well, they don’t know what they were missing, because there’s a really nice hotel there; and even better, I arrived just in time for dinner.
The hotel, Les Lumières, was based on a philosophical theme, with a library of tomes by great thinkers, and by the bed a copy of The Daily Stoic and a little machine which played the sounds of rain, the sea, whales farting in the briny deep, or a guided meditation by a woman with a sultry voice to help you relax.
Unfortunately, at one point she said “Now think of your body as your home,” and my first thought was that the roof of my home needs fixed.
Still, never mind: after a night of surreal dreams caused by too much cheese at dinner and a refreshing facial in the serene spa, I walked five minutes to the Palace of Versailles, built by Louis on the site of his father’s former hunting lodge.
As with the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the Square of the Imam in Esfahan and Donald Trump’s hair, the impression is of vast, overwhelming opulence, with the nobles in the portraits on the walls looking as unprepossessing, fat and ugly as the rest of us.
Louis himself looks like a pompous prat. No wonder the peasants revolted.
Louis XIV of France
There, having sorted that out, to Normandy, and Château d’Audrieu, a glorious 1715 mansion which has been owned by only two families since then, and became a hotel in 1975.
I knew I was going to like it from the moment we crunched up the gravel drive to see a giant cobalt blue apple in the courtyard, contrasting perfectly with the creamy stone of the main building behind.
Château d’Audrieu 
The breakfast room at Les Lumières (ANTOINE BONIN)
First stop was a wander through the vast walled garden and the tree house for a dip in the heated pool, surrounded by woods in which the luting love song of a blackbird rose hopefully into the early evening air.
Freshly dipped, it was time to meet Marie, an elegant matron with eyes the colour of meadows washed in spring, and her husband, dressed as a Royal Scots Fusiliers Sergeant, for a tour around the grounds set in 1944, when the Allies had landed and the SS who had occupied the château had fled, having illegally executed 22 Canadian and British prisoners of war in the grounds.
The facade of Les Lumières hotel (ANTOINE BONIN)
The then owner, Philippe Livry-Level, had escaped to England to serve as an RAF navigator, winning the DFC and surviving the war to return home.
I was still thinking how lucky we are to live in less grim times as I sat down to dinner by resident genius Samuel Gaspar, whose modus operandi of fresh local ingredients simply prepared was to produce some divine meals over the next three days worthy of a Michelin star.
Some of the dishes served up at
Château d’Audrieu
The next day, more war, with tour guide Lesley Coutts, who was born in Edinburgh, studied French and Russian at Glasgow University, came to Caen on an exchange scheme in 1987, and never left.
Her uncle was the rear gunner on a Lancaster, and his crew survived a war in which only one in three bomber crews did.
First stop was the British military cemetery in Bayeux, and I felt the same as I had in Flanders, looking at the endless rows of white granite tombstones: that it’s easy to think of war as noble and heroic, but all it really creates is destruction, suffering and death.
The military cemetery at the town of Bayeux (Eric Bascol/Getty Images)
Next were the coastal German gun batteries at Longues-sur-Mer, several of them with the guns still in place, although dropped in impotent defeat rather than raised in phallic arrogance against the D-Day invasion force.
Standing there today among fields of poppies and wheat being brushed gently by the morning breeze and looking down at the golden beach and the sea beyond, it is difficult to imagine the carnage of June 6 1944, as British, Canadian and American soldiers fought their way up the five invasion beaches and inland.
At Arromanches, you can see the remains of the vast Mulberry floating harbour which during the 100 days of the battle for Normandy unloaded 2.5 million soldiers, 500,000 vehicles and four million tons of supplies.
Accommodation at Château d’Audrieu
With a last look at the memories of war, we turned to peace at La Flaguerie, a farm in the middle of exactly nowhere owned by the same family since 1835, whose orchard of 7,000 trees produces a quarter of a million bottles of apple juice, cider, Calvados and Pommeau every year.
The current owner is 90 and still going strong, which just shows how healthy alcohol is for you.
I was shown around by Anthony Bouisset, originally from Martinique, as beneath our feet, ladybirds pottered about on afternoon errands.
“My mother always insisted that Calvados was better, and my father rum. Naturally, my mother won,” he said.
She was, like most mothers, right: the La Flaguerie Calvados I tasted after our walk around was a wonderfully happy marriage of tartness and sweetness, subtlety and punch.
The orchard also has 40 hives whose bees pollinate the apple trees, and Stéphane, the beekeeper, places a little tray in front of each filled with Coke to trap wasps and hornets who might otherwise kill his bees.
“Is that an old family trick passed down through the generations?” Anthony asked him once.
“No, I saw it on YouTube,” said Stéphane.
Resident donkeys at Château d’Audrieu
THE FACTS
Getting there
EasyJet flies from Belfast International to Paris Charles de Gaulle (https://www.easyjet.com/en/), which is about an hour transfer to Les Lumières.
A train from Paris Saint-Lazare to Bayeux or Caen takes two to three hours (https://www.sncf-connect.com/en-en/train/france/normandy). From either, it’s about 20 minutes to Château d’Audrieu.
The hotels
Prices at Les Lumières start €280 per night for a double room, or €310 including breakfast.
https://www.leslumieres.com/en/
Prices at Château d’Audrieu start at €295 per night for a double room, and €500 for a junior suite, including buffet breakfast.
https://chateaudaudrieu.com/fr/