10 étangs

Flavion sits in the Namur countryside of Wallonia, between the towns of Namur and Dinant, in a landscape of low hills, river valleys, woods and fields. The property itself is six hectares of it, private and shared with nobody but the owners. A marked walk, the Promenade des Libellules, runs between the ponds through a wide reed bed and finishes in the wildest corner, the old watercress beds. The wildlife is genuinely good: herons and cormorants, ducks, frogs and salamanders, and hares, foxes, roe deer and wild boar in the woods. Beyond the gate there is the Haute-Meuse and the Molignée valley, Maredsous Abbey, the gardens at Annevoie, the castles at Freÿr and Vêves, and two of the prettiest villages in Wallonia at Crupet and Sosoye.

Anne Champion and Jean-Luc Laloux are a couple who have been doing this for a while. She is a visual artist, he is an architectural photographer, and before this they created a string of well-known Belgian gîtes, Les Duves, La Classe, La Micheline, La Station, and the events space at La Carrière. This is their most recent project: an old fish farm with a stone house and a shed for farm machinery, turned into somewhere to stay without losing what was already there. The materials are local and plain, oak from the sawmill in the village, iron, concrete, and the furniture is a collected mix of vintage design pieces rather than a bought-in scheme. The big living space has an open fire and a kitchen with a professional gas range built into the bar. Outside, the pontoon runs out into the swimming pond, and the wood-fired hot tub is at its best in autumn when the mist sits on the water.