Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, Rove goats, animals, farm

Eco-responsibility



Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, Rove goats, animals, farm

Geographical location



We are lucky enough to live and work in the hamlet of Eoulx, in the Alpes de Haute Provence, situated at an altitude of 1000 metres and 20 minutes from Castellane.


Located at the gateway to the Gorges du Verdon, we carry out our activity in a natural and protected area. The calm and the nature are present to allow you to spend a pleasant stay.

Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - trapper's camp in the middle of the forest, family stay, Castellane, privatize for your events

Home-like welcome



As our customers' comments show, we are a small, family-run business and we are happy to welcome you "as if you were at home", with friendliness and hospitality. We will be there to serve you and advise you on your escapades. We are local ambassadors, we love our region. We favour human contact and the sharing of experience. Your visits and discoveries will be a source of information that we will be happy to share and pass on.

Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, Rove goats, animals, farm

Kitchen



Our cuisine respects the seasonal nature of the products; all our dishes are home-made.

We propose you to taste local specialities, from Provence, from the south: tapenade as an aperitif, Provençal daube as a dish...

For breakfast, you can taste our home-made jams that we make every year when the fruit is ripe.

Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, home cooking

Local products



We try as much as possible to supply ourselves in short circuit, with local producers who make reasoned culture and or bio.

In full season you will find at our place:


A tasting of local beers

Goat cheese comes from a small village in the Gorges of the Verdon. A work of passion realized by Perrine Cadoret. Visit the Facebook Page of the draille des Roves

Honey of a beekeeper of the Alps of high Provence Georges Huet (order also on the site https://www.miel-abeilles.fr)

Tasting of wine Bio of the Gorges of the Verdon

Vegetables, we are fortunate to have a local producer on our hamlet of Eoulx, Franck who realizes of the maraîchage of altitude. Rdv on the Facebook Page of Ortie and Grelinette.

We regularly go to market of Castellane to meet the local producers and of Provence.



Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, Rove goats, animals, farm

Eco-responsible accommodation



Our 6 yurts are traditional dwellings, imported from Mongolia. They are installed on our camp all year round and are a great place to live. This construction is made of wood, cotton canvas, sheep's wool and a coated cotton canvas that makes it waterproof and breathable. These accommodations have little impact on the environment as they are built on a wooden floor. Most of the materials used are natural.


Less natural materials are used to resist over time, to cope with the very variable climate at 1000 metres altitude (wind, run-off, snow, sun).

Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, Rove goats, animals, farm

Water self sufficiency



See for yourself... Lost in the middle of the mountains with no drinking water network, we are 100% self-sufficient in water for all our activities. We were lucky enough to be able to tap into a mountain spring. To do this, we manage and maintain the 1500 meters of pipe to bring the water to our property. We fill a food tank that we have buried. We have built a technical room to install a water pump, a booster, a filtration system and a UV lamp.


This installation requires regular maintenance and monitoring. The difficulties encountered can be :


partial dryness of the spring, in which case we will fill a 1000-litre tank at our hamlet's fountain and pour it into our tank manually

freezing of the water network, in which case in winter we make sure that there is enough pressure to avoid the formation of ice on our network, in which case we wait patiently for the thaw.

Our water is analysed every year and is declared potable. We are very proud to have succeeded in this great project.

Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, Rove goats, animals, farm

Energies



We are connected to the traditional electricity network and we have taken out a subscription with a green energy supplier "Ilek offers us energy from hydroelectric dams".


We have some beautiful dams to discover in our region.


Our main residence is powered by an air/water heat pump, which heats our house and our water.


We have launched the reflection of the project of electrical autonomy on the basis of our peak consumption in winter which is 36000 watt.


Study of the photovoltaic project: the studies propose us a self-consumption of the produced energy. The financial report is not yet interesting. We would have to invest more than 40,000 euros to produce only 40% of our energy needs.


We have managed to reduce the energy expenditure of our camp by installing thermostat plugs on the radiator plugs of the yurts (the radiator only switches on if the desired temperature is not reached). We have installed fan heaters in the sanitary facilities so that we don't have to leave a radiator running unnecessarily during the night and day. The fan heater heats up a bathroom quickly when in use.



Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, Rove goats, animals, farm

Dry toilets



We have installed dry toilets in all our rental accommodations to avoid wasting drinking water, thus saving water. Our spring water is precious. We use white paper (no dyes) and sawdust. We compost our toilets on our land. After more than a year of composting, we can recover this compost.


We still have room for improvement in this area. For reasons of hygiene, all our toilets are equipped with single-use plastic bags that are changed for each customer. Our toilets are made of wood.

Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, Rove goats, animals, farm

Educational farm



As animal lovers, we have built a farm with recycled materials to house animals that we recover.


Goats that were destined for the slaughterhouse, recovered or kids abandoned by their mothers. Poultry has also been donated to us.


I am a beekeeper and we also do beekeeping education to explain to our customers the life of bees and the making of this good nectar "honey". We open our honey house to beekeepers who wish to collect their honey from us, without investing in their own equipment. We participate in the preservation of this species which is so important for the pollination of our fruits and vegetables.


Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, animals in the wild, Rove goats

Participatory workshops and local actors



Since the beginning of our adventure as owners of this 5 hectare plot of land, we have favoured the work of local craftsmen (earthworkers, plumbers, electricians...).


We have also set up knowledge sharing and mutual aid, and have opened participative workshops, here are some examples:


Our first website and logo were made by a network of friends. Many of them were able to help and advise us from a distance.

The construction of our current website is the meeting of a local actor, a young company "Cocotte web"; the meeting of Florence Bessada, living in Provence. We strongly advise you to use her services.

The sharing of knowledge and mutual aid is necessary when one launches out on the assembly or the maintenance of a traditional Mongolian habitat. We assemble and dismantle our yurts regularly to check the wooden structures (repair the joints), clean the canvas, repair them (sewing), maintain the traditional paintings, change the tarpaulins (cotton coating), repair the roof squares (gluing, sewing)... For 1 yurt we take 1 day with 6 people. We enjoy sharing with our volunteers our knowledge of this habitat which is open all year round and requires regular maintenance.

We learn a lot from others. All the maintenance work in our camp is the work of all those who agreed to help us: wood maintenance (pruning, selection of trees), painting of traditional woodwork, construction of the animal rescue project (construction of a mini-farm for the reception of animals...), learning how to look after the animals (taking care of them).

Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - unusual accommodation, family holiday, Castellane, Rove goats, animals, farm

Our environment



We offer our guests walks to share our natural environment. We talk about the history of our hamlet, we go and see the fields or the high altitude cultivation areas, we open an educational beehive and we can also go and see the spring.Our activity is located at the gateway to the Gorges du Verdon in the hamlet of Eoulx. We are surrounded by pasture and forest areas. We are fortunate enough to operate in a protected natural area, 14 communes of the Middle Verdon are in a Natura 2000 zone or protected by a conservation area "Grand Canyon du Verdon", "Asse" valley, "Gorges de Trevans".
Maintenance of our areas: Come in spring to discover the flowers of our mountains, they are in abundance.
Our areas are maintained in a reasoned manner, they are open to our customers, you enjoy a natural space and protected environment.
Destination Ailleurs, Gorges du Verdon - yurts in the heart of nature, family holiday, Castellane

Eco-tourism and well-being



All our values, our actions and our commitments link us with a clientele sensitive to the environment. We will be delighted to exchange with you and share your ideas that will help us move forward.


We are registered in a travel approach, tourism without season since we are open 11 months of the year, which will allow you to discover our mountains in all seasons.


Destination Ailleurs is a place where you will have the certainty to leave rested, disoriented. Enjoy our wellness offer with a massage session with natural products and a SPA session in the open air.



Choosing to live in such a beautiful environment is an awareness of life, nature and allows us to question ourselves. Being eco-responsible is to implement actions at our level, adapted to our activity and our constraints.


Become responsible consumers and participate in the adventure of Destination Ailleurs. We are committed to a responsible and sustainable project.