Spring has Sprung at the Chateau!

Hello Campers, Founding Members, and the Chateau Curious,

The grounds are waking up from their winter sleep and everything is about to bloom here at Chateau de Béduer. It was a very rainy winter and so everything is about to BURST into flower!

Our groundskeeper, Emily, and her assistant, Ruth, are busy replanting the geraniums, bringing the lemon and lime trees back outside, finishing the winter pruning work, putting in an extra flower garden to supply our new flower arranging class and starting the vegetable garden for our potager gardening class. They have both been working hard for the last 9 months to nurture our rose gardens back to glory - as our roses had been a little neglected over the past 10 years. Things are looking very promising for an amazing rose display this summer and the Deadheaded Roses badge is going to be very popular with our campers!

Ruth and Emily are often spied on by our resident owls, who like to perch up in the tower and watch them hard at work!

Work on the vineyard has been progressing well over the winter. On a frosty February evening our local wine-making consultant, Bernard, came to La Grange (the summer staff quarters for Camp Chateau) and give us a tasting of his recommended wines

Bernard knows the region and local soil well and he has helped us to select newer hybrid vines that are suited for our land, are able to handle climate change and are naturally disease resistant. We will be certified organic and so we need to be very thoughtful about our choices!

We also want to be sure that our vines will produce good drinking wines and so we enjoyed a lovely evening with Bernard, trying different blends of Artaban and Vidok red wines and Sauvignon Blanc and Floreal white wines.

They were all lovely, easy-drinking wines, perfect for our campers and so we told Bernard to go ahead and order the vineyard. As you can see, he was very happy about our decision to move ahead! The root stock and vines will be planted in October and our first harvest will be as soon as 2027.

While the permanent chateau team has been busy preparing the building and grounds for this summer, our Camp Director, Tegwen, has been finding our Camp Counselor Team for 2024 and I am so excited to introduce you to our wonderful and expanded Camp Chateau Summer Counselor Team.

Click here to learn more about each of our counselors. Our summer 2024 counselor team is bringing enthusiasm, experience and some fun new activities and we are designing the new badges for those now. We will share more info on our summer activity plans in our email updates. If you are not already subscribed to our emails, be sure to subscribe on our website to get all the latest news from Camp Chateau.

I am sure you are all excited to hear that chef Jerémy is back this summer and he has a new sous-chef, Six! They have both spent time at the chateau this winter, planning kitchen improvements and trying out recipe ideas. We are looking forward to sharing another delicious camp season with them both!

Jerémy loves to source his kitchen ingredients locally and always focuses on organic produce (which they call ‘bio’ in France). He has already started talking with local suppliers to ensure we have the best organic, locally produced ingredients this summer. He will be hiring a local dedicated kitchen and dinner service team in the coming weeks.

We are a popular employer locally are delighted that we have been able to hire cleaning, kitchen, gardening and counselor team members from our local community.

Yes, we have a bunk for you!

As you know, we sold out for 2024 and so we added two additional weeks to our camp calendar for September 2024. Some of our campers have moved their bookings to those September weeks and so we now have a few openings in most of our sessions. So GET EXCITED, because yes, we have a bunk for you! Just go to our booking page and check out which sessions still have availability, and grab your slot quickly before they all sell out again!

This year we have campers booked from all over the United States, Europe, Africa, Australia and Central and South America. I cannot wait to meet you all and to share with you our mission of creating an inclusive space for women.

Do you love what we are doing and might be interested in joining our 128 Founding Members? Our Founding Members enjoy a free week at camp every summer and a 5% annual return on their membership as well as the joy of investing in a women owned, managed, designed and dedicated business. If you would like to learn more about being a Founding Member, please reach out to me at [email protected].

Our values are Authenticity, Excellence, Community and Joy and I am so excited to see these all in action for our second summer! à Bient?t!

Cordialement,

Philippa Girling (CEO & Co-Founder)