If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR227.27), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
The Provençal vineyards stretching out over leafy hillsides surrounding Bastide du Mourre was our first clue that this might be our kind of wellness retreat. It’s set in a 17th-century country house with a gloriously green estate laid out like a hamlet, where rooms are quietly charming and hung with lavender bunches. There are HIIT classes, wake-up yoga, Pilates and hikes deep into the Luberon Regional Natural Park, but also immersed-in-nature massages; healthy food, decadently dressed; and wine. Surely that’s enough motivation to get up and go?
11am, but flexible, on request and subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3.30pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £214.09 (€250), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €5.06 per person per night on check-out.
More details
Rates don’t include the hotel’s healthy buffet-style breakfast (€30 a guest). But yoga sessions and two guided hikes a week are free and on arrival you’ll find green and black tea and some biscuits waiting for you.
Also
Unfortunately the vintage building and rugged farm outlay make this stay unsuitable for guests with mobility issues.
Hotel closed
The hotel closes for the winter season.
At the hotel
Sauna, Nordic bath, sports hall, pétanque pitch, tennis court, bikes for hire (€15 an hour, €30 a half day, €45 a full day), living room, umbrellas and plug-adaptors to borrow, charged laundry service, and free WiFi. In rooms: minibar, air-conditioning, Susanne Kaufmann bath products.
Our favourite rooms
There’s a rustic spareness to rooms – with white walls and just a desk, posies of dried flowers and perhaps a wooden shutter or the ghost of the Bastide’s former features (a fireplace, painted-over window…), but this contributes to the sense of calm and draws focus to those soul-stirring green views. The Superior has views over the Luberon mountains, and the Grande Deluxe is the largest on the property.
Poolside
The sizable heated pool is hidden in the garden’s greenery, surrounded by loungers and sherbet-hued parasols, with a glimpse of mountains between the branches.
Spa
Spa-ing is practically mandatory here – how else can you fully achieve inner peace and a dewy glow? You’ll be pampered in ‘pods’ set amid the trees, with just the rustle of leaves to disturb. Products are by organic French brand On the Wild Side, which will brighten, lift and scrub as part of botanically scented facials, wraps and massages (or special Ayurvedic and Renata França-method therapies and reflexology on request). Mani-pedis and waxing can be booked too, and the sauna and Nordic bath (heated to 35 degrees) in the grounds will steam any worries away. Fitness comes in the form of yoga and HIIT classes, and hikes into nature, and there are a range of specialists whose services you can call on, from dieticians to naturopaths to shiatsu practitioners.
Packing tips
Here’s what you’ll need to make a new you: yoga and work-out gear, hiking shoes and swimming costumes.
Also
The hotel recognises that snacking is an important part of wellness too, and so nuts, fresh fruit and detox waters are laid out from 4pm to 6pm daily.
The only shushing you should be doing here is quieting any intrusive anxious thoughts, so leave the little ones at home.
Sustainability efforts
The bastide itself – formerly a farm and maison d’hôtes – had the outlay for a hotel, but in its glow-up it’s exceeded expectations. Rugged wood and stone features have been held onto, and operations are eco-minded, with 90 per cent biodegradable products used onsite, locally sourced ingredients and a ban on single-use plastic.
Wherever you can look out upon the Luberon range – although you can’t really miss these majestic mountains.
Dress Code
Peel off the Lycra for something waftier and summery.
Hotel restaurant
Chef Yannis Belghit makes healthy eating haute, with a seasonally changing, naturopathic menu that puts plants and garden-grown ingredients at the fore, and makes ‘good for you’ very good indeed. Tuck into beetroot hummus with figs from the hotel’s trees, fresh fish marinated in tiger milk and studded with wild flowers, pearly cod dolloped with eggplant caviar, and strawberry tarts slathered in vegan cream. This table d'hôtes (closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays) has tables out in the jasmine-scented gardens and a dining room dressed with rustic beams, blonde wood and wicker.
Hotel bar
Drink to your health with kombucha or green and black tea – or maybe with a few chilled glasses of Provençal wine.
Last orders
Breakfast is from 7.30am to 10.30am, lunch from noon till 2pm and dinner from 7.30pm till 9pm.
Bastide du Mourre is a hamlet-style stay on a hillside in a vine-striated Provençal vale, close to the Luberon massif and the charming Oppède commune.
Planes
Avignon Airport has a small number of routes in Europe and is just a 30-minute drive from the hotel. However, Marseille, an hour’s drive away, has a wider spread of global international connections. From here, the hotel can arrange transfers (from €130 to €190 one-way, depending on the time and day).
Trains
Cavaillon station, a 20-minute drive away, is the closest. From here you can ride to Marseille or Avignon. And, the Avignon TGV Station will let you explore the wider region. Transfers can be arranged from both (prices range from €50 to €100).
Automobiles
The wonderfully wild Luberon is best explored by car, and the hotel has free parking 200 metres or so from the main building – but you could easily come here and spend your whole stay onsite, stretching your legs on verdant hikes.
Worth getting out of bed for
If you’re on a wellness mission, gather your yoga gear, hiking shoes and meditation mantra, and come find yourself amid truffle oaks, lush vineyards and flowering jasmine shrubs at the heart of the Luberon. Formerly a Provençal farm, Bastide du Mourre gives you space from the real world for a little while, and offers you divergent wellness paths: one that treks merrily along wildlife-rich, butterfly-fluttered trails in the Luberon Regional Natural Park (with knowledgeable guides to point out plants of note, geological features and regale you with the region’s history; twice a week, and free for guests); stops for a friendly game of tennis; then sweats it out on a tailored bootcamp or at an alfresco HIIT session. And another, that doesn’t really go anywhere, just meandering around the grounds, simmering away in the sauna or Nordic bath, flopping in the spa to be wrapped in olive-tree leaves or be massaged with mint and eucalyptus, and stretching gently at yoga classes (three free a week) that follow various disciplines or Pilates. You call the shots when it comes to your betterment style. Otherwise Oppède is a very jolie village to explore, as are Bonnieux, Gordes, Lacoste, Roussillon… alongside many others in this lovable corner of Provence. And, for a heady hit of the region’s best-loved flower, follow your nose to the Lavender Museum.
Local restaurants
Le Petit Café des Jeanne has a romantic terrace and dishes that look to the locality and a bit beyond: tomato and mozzarella with truffle and a black-olive crumb, tuna and swordfish carpaccio drizzled with a passionfruit vinaigrette, red-mullet mille-feuille with Provençal vegetables. Domitia Maison de Cuisinier, a 10-minute drive away (closed Wednesdays and Thursdays), is all rugged stone on the outside, foxed mirrors on the inside and has beautiful plates: pork with salted anchovies in a squid-ink sauce, grilled boudin with apple and pear in celery oil, lobster with strawberries in a geranium-infused broth. Café du Progrès in Ménerbes (closed Sundays and Mondays) has views for miles of rolling countryside and Mont Ventoux – and the food is almost as attractive a prospect, since it dishes up sweet tomato and smoked-salmon crumble with ricotta, saffron arancini with orange and carrot cream, strawberries and honey madeleines with elderflower jam. And La Trinquette has dramatic alfresco seating, set atop a turret in Gordes.
Local bars
Le Mas des Infermières might look like your run-of-the-mill winery, but this one is owned by Ridley Scott and has an exhibition dedicated to the director with props and costumes. And you can sample his sippable creations in an industrial-chic tasting room devoid of Giger-esque menace. It’s far from the only domaine around these parts: La Garelle, Les Roullets, La Royère…take your pick.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this healing hamlet set on a hillside by the loftier Luberon range feeling reinvigorated and clearer-headed, a full account of their immersed-in-nature break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Bastide du Mourre in Provence…
What if, instead of getting to grips with the torturous strength equipment in a sweaty studio or spinning yourself into a frenzy as someone in neon yells at you, your health kick felt more like a sexy French romp. Well, for a start Bastide du Mourre (part of the Fontenille group) is surrounded by vineyards and truffle oaks, lies by the ridiculously beautiful Luberon massif, and is housed in a 17th-century country house, where rooms as bright white as the noise you need to meditate are strung with dried herbs and flowers. It’s altogether a far more motivating prospect, where you’ll be more than happy to wake up and contort at a yoga class; strap on some hiking boots and head out into the natural park (pausing with your guide to appreciate a wild owl or rabbit or nibble on an edible leaf); hit up a HIIT class and consult with a dietician before tucking into beetroot hummus with fresh figs or tiger-milk-marinated fish garnished with flowers from the estate. And there’s the – likely leafy – path of least resistance too: reading in the lush gardens, soaking in a Nordic bath, getting massaged in front of a forest panorama, and dosing yourself up with local wines. Whichever you choose, that endorphin rush is guaranteed.
