Auberge de la Source

Location: The hotel is widely praised for its picturesque and tranquil location, nestled in the countryside near Honfleur, offering a peaceful escape from busier tourist areas.

What should’ve been a really rest for, beautiful stay in a gorgeous rural location turned out to be somewhat of an assault on the senses, and not a relaxing stay, unfortunately. The hotel is gorgeous, and we were delighted when we arrived and checked into our lovely room, with beautiful views. However, despite this lovely quiet location, we were greeted with very noisy and disruptive/messy roadworks directly outside the hotel, which had clearly been there for weeks, and which the hotel must’ve known about. There had been zero communication about this, letting us know that it would be going on, presumably because people would’ve changed their plans and cancelled their bookings? And there was no information as to how we would be affected, i.e. there was no access to one of the two car parks every day, with a few miles drive round to get to the other car park, and the hotel should’ve been communicating on this on a daily basis to let us know what was happening and what we should do. In the mornings, from 8 am, the work began, and it was unbelievably noisy, disruptive, messy, and it was impossible to stay at the hotel beyond breakfast due to this. Thankfully, they finished in the late afternoon, so it was peaceful after that. Because it had been raining, the whole place was a mud bath all around the area, And this meant that we either had to tromp through that, or go up the treacherous back stairs past the kitchen which were steep, narrow, wet, smelly and busy… In the garden, the hotel had floodlights on until 1 am, and this was very impactful on the quality of our sleep due to the fact that the curtains did not fit the windows and were not light proof, meaning that there were huge gaps around them, and light was coming in through them. We ended up having to drape bath towels over the gaps to block out as many cracks as we could, and filling along the bottoms on the windowsills with bath mats and towels. It wasn’t great, but it made it better. Then, at 5 am every morning of the four nights we stayed, sensor lights started to come on and off for the following two hours. I spoke to staff every morning about this, and the disruption on sleep, but they did nothing to address it will change it. When we checked into our room, there was an incredibly strong smell of air fresheners, to the point where my skin was burning and my eyes were watering. I tracked these down to the toilet and dresser immediately outside the toilet, and was able to put them outside, so the smell abated by the next morning. However, we soon realised why they were there, and it was because the toilet/drains were stinking! The air fresheners were obviously there to camouflage the terrible smell, which – even keeping the toilet door shut and all the windows open – was really intrusive. Overall, despite this beautiful location, gorgeous rooms, lots of comfort, and some good service, our stay was really hampered by all of the above. The restaurant was fantastic, and the breakfast

We had a lovely stay at Auberge de la Source. The hotel feels like straight out of a Normandy-Fairytale, the staff was friendly and the tasting menu tasty. We would have stayed even longer, if we would have had the time!