The Fontaine-Couture refuge is located in Théméricourt at the crossroads of two major cycling itineraries: the London-Paris path and the Compostela path that originates in Harlem, in the north of Holland. We are at the heart of the Natural Regional Park of the Vexin-Français with its 1200km of blazed trails. And all that at a mere 50 minutes from the center of Paris. We can accommodate you the year-round, (give or take a few weeks for vacation…), in a friendly and restful halt…
equipment and services
L'esprit des lieux
The Fontaine-Couture refuge is situated in Théméricourt, at the heart of the Natural Regional Park of the Vexin-Français. The Park’s headquarters and the interesting museum it contains are just across the square, in the château. The village is calm and pretty between it’s two streams, the Guiry and the Aubette, but it is a crossroads too, of bicycling itineraries and hiking paths. The dilemma is therefore deciding between dawdling in the town’s streets and local paths or succumbing to the call of the horizon. So why choose? Stop awhile and then, refreshed, head off again on your chosen trail…
The idea to create this place was born of an encounter. One evening, Arnold, a Dutch cyclist on his way to Compostela, rang at our door. Understandably tired, he was looking for a place to sleep. So we invited him in and began telephoning around in search of accommodations for the night. But, in spite of the hour spent, nothing was found. Hikers ourselves, and therefore inevitably compassionate, we invited him to stay for the night and share our meal. Since a part of our house was still empty and without a determined purpose, that sparked the “why not” that we took to the Natural Regional Park’s services who, it turns out, not only thought the idea was good but were already conscious of the need and thoroughly ready to assist us.
Which was how the new vocation of the old horse-barn of the Fontaine-Couture farm came about. The refuge is willed open to all and resolutely collective in the manner of mountain huts or the Spanish “refugios” on the Compostela trail. Simple but comfortable, it is well equipped for the autonomy of each and everyone. Reservations are welcome and indeed prudent, (there are only so many beds…), so don’t hesitate to call ahead if we are on your route. But you can just knock on the door, too…
Why the name ?
Situated in what old plans indicate were the stables, the refuge is part of what used to be a very big farm. We’d been given to think that the unusual name was an adjunction of two family names at the occasion of a strategic marriage but it turns out that that isn’t quite so, as show documents kindly brought to us by Serge Paris, the editor of our local newspaper, Le Petit Journal de Sagy. The farm did come into the possession of François Elisabeth Fontaine by way of his marriage, not into the Couture family, but to Marie Petit, a marriage celebrated in Théméricourt’s church on the second of June 1794. The marriage act, still in the town’s archives, has been signed by the two spouses and their numerous witnesses, the husband’s signature a bold and flourished “Fontaine-Couture”. But why “Fontaine-Couture” when he is the second son of Pierre Fontaine, architect in Pontoise? His elder brother, also named Pierre and soon to become the renowned architect of Napoléon Bonaparte, went by the family surname alone. Much is known about him and his family, (notably that he was subsequently appointed the “plumber-fountaineer” of Versailles, where he lived and eventually died and that he probably didn’t pass a lot of time in Théméricourt), but the reasons for his alias remain a mystery to us.
We do know that the family fortunes were gradually reversed because when Marie-Noëlle and Dominique bought the place in the year 2000 it had been abandoned for over a half a century, the barn’s roof fallen through and the house open to the four winds. But don’t worry: the stables had already been turned to lodging in the 19th century and since the beginning of the 21st, work has hardly ceased. The refuge has been the last campaign of renovation, all through 2018.
And it pleases us that the refuge’s name contains something of its long history.
Marie-Noëlle and Rob, themselves cyclists and hikers, and Théo and Thomas, the sons of Marie-Noëlle, welcome you year-round at the refuge…with special mention for Willys their nice dog.