In two sentences
Le Puits d'Angle is a five-room bed & breakfast in Thibivillers (Oise), 80 km north-west of Paris — about one hour by car via the A15 or A16, or 1 h 15 by train from Saint-Lazare. People come for the quiet of a village of 150 inhabitants, an indoor pool open all year, a hammam, a fireside library, an entirely home-made breakfast and, in the evening, Florence's table d'hôtes — all for €100 to €130 a night for two, all year round.
Why here rather than elsewhere
- Close enough to leave on Friday evening
- Door to door in an hour from western Paris, no tolls on the A15. Check-in until 10 pm, and dinner waiting if you booked it.
- Far enough to breathe
- Thibivillers is a village of 150 souls on the plateau of the French Vexin: no through road, a walled garden, rooms with their own entrance. Guests call it “a haven of peace”.
- An indoor pool, whatever the season
- Heated and reserved for guests, with an adjoining hammam: it is what sets the house apart from other B&Bs in the region, and what reviews mention most after the welcome.
- No need to go out
- Home-made breakfast (fresh juice, yoghurts, rice pudding, jams), table d'hôtes in the evening on reservation, library, games, loungers. The whole weekend can happen within the walls.
- Or quite the opposite
- Giverny and Monet's gardens 40 minutes away, Gerberoy 30, Gisors castle 15, Auvers-sur-Oise 45, two 18-hole golf courses 6 km away, the Epte greenway for cycling.
The 48-hour plan
Friday evening
Leave Paris around 6 pm, arrive around 7.15 pm via the D915. A swim in the pool, a turn in the hammam, then the table d'hôtes in the library: three courses with wine, €39 per person. Sleep under old beams — Chanteclerc or Pink Lady if you like a bathtub under the eaves.
Saturday
Breakfast by the fire or under the magnolia. Morning: Giverny (book tickets ahead), Claude Monet's house and gardens. Lunch in Vernon or a picnic on the Seine at La Roche-Guyon. Afternoon: back through the Vexin villages, an hour of garden and pool. Evening: dinner in Gisors or Chaumont-en-Vexin — we book — or the table d'hôtes again.
Sunday
Lie-in, breakfast until 10 am. Gisors market, then Gerberoy — one of the Most Beautiful Villages of France, roses in June — or a walking loop from the house across the plateau. Leave after 11.30 am: back in Paris by 4 pm, no traffic.
Three other ways to do it
The golf version
18 holes at Rebetz on Saturday, 18 at Bertichères on Sunday, pool and hammam in between. Early breakfast on request.
The family version
Extra bed for a child, garden, table tennis, pool with the parents, Gisors castle and its ramparts, Parc Saint-Paul 25 minutes away for the youngest.
The winter version
A 28 °C pool under the timber roof, hammam, open fire, table d'hôtes two nights running, a good pile of books. Beauvais and its cathedral if the sky clears.
And compared with…
- A hotel in Paris
- Here: silence, a garden, a pool to yourselves and a home-made breakfast — for the price of a decent room in the Marais.
- A whole rental
- You don't cook, you don't make the beds, and there is someone to tell you where to go. Only five rooms: it feels like staying with friends, not in a block.
- Normandy or Burgundy
- One hour instead of two or three. The weekend starts on Friday evening, not Saturday lunchtime.