From running a hotel in the UK to gîtes in France, Robert and Victoria Milton have put a warm welcome at the heart of their businesses
Pre-Brexit, pre-Covid and before the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, when life and prices appeared normal, Victoria and I were running a successful 29-bedroom boutique hotel on the south coast, in the picturesque Georgian market town of Lymington. Alongside the rooms, responsibility for two diverse award-winning restaurants and, of course, 50 staff, had their daily challenges – which one day, we’d love to share in the form of a book Memoirs of a hotel owner.
We’ve both been in hospitality all our lives.
During our 14 years of owning the hotel, we had a very enjoyable journey. It wasexhausting at times but immensely rewarding, working with numerous fantastic characters and meeting new guests with amazing tales from around the world, as well as our regulars – we had quite a following. The food was always fantastic at the hotel, although rushed staff meals © LE MANOIR DU MÛRIER off the hot plate were the norm for us. Having an extensive wine portfolio was memorable on special occasions, and we organised wine dinners for something extra special.
However, life has many chapters and over numerous Sunday evening roast dinners, pondering what the next chapter for us would be, we hatched a plan to move abroad. Anyone who knows Victoria knows she’s an avid researcher and completer-finisher, so the ‘seeds’ for the next adventure were being sown.
WHERE TO CHOOSE?
Would it be France, Spain or Portugal? We eventually focused our search on the Charente-Maritime, on the west coast of France, as it ticked the following boxes: French culture and architecture; a microclimate second only to the south of France; good transport links with flights to and from Bordeaux and Bergerac, TGV route to Paris, ferries from the UK and the A10 running down through France; local attractions within an hour of Bordeaux, like Cognac, La Rochelle, Medoc, St-Emillion and the coast; and we’d be living in one of the world's most significant wine regions.
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GAME ON
We made numerous trips to the region, spending two or three days at a time. Eventually we stumbled across an agent immobilier who, unlike UK agents, said she’d help us find our perfect property. This culminated in us taking a we
