A weekend with friends, twenty of you, is the moment when nothing fits anywhere any more. Holiday cottages cap out at twelve, hotels scatter the group across three floors, and the idea of one shared house dissolves into logistics. We host these groups all year at the Château de la Huberdière, in the Touraine near Amboise, on a 14 hectare estate hired in full, 2 hrs 20 from Paris.
University reunions, milestone birthdays, a quiet hen or stag weekend, an extended family gathering: here is how a group weekend at the château actually unfolds, what it costs, and what the place will not do for you.
Where should twenty friends go for a weekend?
Beyond twelve people, only one format holds up: an estate hired in its entirety for the group. Below that, you are in holiday-let territory; above it, you end up booking a block of hotel rooms, and the weekend with friends becomes twenty parallel stays.
The difference comes down to something simple: a shared room. In a hotel, a group crosses paths at breakfast and loses itself the rest of the time. Here there is a hall, four drawing rooms in enfilade and a single long table. People find each other without arranging to, which is exactly what you want when you have not met in three years.
Our closest equivalents on this format often cap at fifteen guests. We go to 21, which changes the kind of groups we host: a whole graduating year, a family with the in-laws, a group of friends with their children. That is the point at which a château stops being a backdrop and becomes a house.
Can friends hire a château privately?
Yes, and without having to justify an occasion. Private hire of a château among friends calls for no wedding, no conference, no pretext: a reunion is reason enough. On Friday evening I open the gates, hand over the keys, and the estate belongs to the group until Sunday.
In practice, exclusive use means no other guests move through the château during your stay. No strangers at breakfast, no check-in time to keep, no drawing room to share. The four reception rooms, the 14 hectares of grounds, the pool, the lake and the long table are yours alone.
It is also what makes the long evenings possible. The park is walled, the house has no adjoining neighbour, and the night owls can put the world to rights in a drawing room without waking the bedroom next door. We do not ask for silence at ten o'clock, which is far from a given in group accommodation.
A word on status, since the question comes up: la Huberdière is a charming hotel, rated three stars by Atout France, not a holiday let. That changes two things for a group, insurance and housekeeping, both of which sit on our side rather than yours.
How many people can stay?
21 people, across 10 bedrooms that each have their own private bathroom. It is a firm limit and we hold to it: beyond that we would need camp beds in the drawing rooms, and a sofa bed in the middle of the living space spoils the weekend for everyone, starting with whoever sleeps on it.
No two bedrooms are alike, and that is deliberate. They carry a name rather than a number: some suit a couple, others a family, a few work well shared between friends. When you book, we allocate the group by age and by affinity, so that nobody has to cross the whole château in pyjamas at seven in the morning.
As for the shared spaces, the four drawing rooms seat a dinner of up to 22 guests at one single table. That is the number that matters for a weekend with friends: being able to eat together, all of you, with no children's table and no second sitting.
How much does it cost to rent a château for a weekend?
The private hire weekend, from 4 pm on Friday to midday on Sunday, comes to 2,600 € in low season and 5,200 € in high season for a group of twenty. Italian catering is booked separately, from 90 € per person. We send a costed proposal within 24 hours, setting out what is included and what is not.
The right calculation is not the price of the château, it is the price per person per night. With twenty guests it often lands at the level of an ordinary hotel room, except that this one comes with grounds, a pool and four drawing rooms. It is almost always at that division that a group makes up its mind.
Three items are priced separately: meals prepared by us, supervised activities, and extra nights if you stay beyond Sunday. Bed and bath linen, housekeeping and heating of the reception rooms are included. We would rather say so upfront than at the bottom of an invoice.
For the same walls seen through capacity and formats, our guide to renting a château with friends or family covers the logistics of a large-capacity booking.
Who does the cooking over the weekend?
Us. The château kitchen is Lodovica's workplace and is not open to groups: that is the trade-off for a table cooked and served for you, rather than a weekend spent shopping and washing up. Breakfast on Saturday and Sunday is included in the exclusive hire, the other meals are booked separately, from 90 € per person.
Lodovica therefore takes charge of the meals. Sharing boards are served every evening except Sunday, and on Thursdays dinner is entirely Italian, fresh pasta included, because that is where she is from. These tables are reserved for residents: you will have nobody from outside in the dining room.
The Italian cookery class tends to gather the whole group around the worktop, children included. It is as much an activity as a dinner, and for a weekend with friends it is by far what works best on the Saturday night: nobody looks at their phone with their hands in the flour. The dining at the château page sets out the formats.
What is there to do, as twenty, on site and around Amboise?
The pattern that works fits into two days: Saturday outside, Sunday on the estate. Exhausting 14 hectares in one morning is not possible, and stringing four châteaux together in two days leaves nobody with a memory of any of them.
On Saturday, Amboise and the Clos Lucé are ten minutes away, Chenonceau twenty, and the cellars of Vouvray and Montlouis-sur-Loire a few minutes' drive. A tasting for twenty needs booking ahead, and most local growers are glad to do it. The bicycles come out too: the estate sits on the Loire à Vélo route.
On Sunday, nobody wants to get back in a car. The pool is heated from April to October, the walk around the lake takes twenty minutes, and pétanque settles the rest. If your group is also after an escape for two, before or after the weekend, our romantic weekend near Amboise maps out a different route.
What the château will not do
Best said straight away: la Huberdière has no spa, and we will not be building one. There is no hammam, no gym, no room service. A group looking for that kind of facility will be better served elsewhere, and we say so on the phone rather than after the booking.
Two other limits are worth knowing before you book. The table d'hôtes does not run on Sunday evening: that night, it is a restaurant in Amboise, ten minutes away. And the lake on the estate is not fenced, which calls for real vigilance if the group includes young children.
One last, more ordinary point: this is a sixteenth-century house, the floorboards creak and the bedrooms are not all on the same floor. Most groups call that the charm. A few do not, and they are entitled to.
Booking your group weekend
Tell us your dates, how many of you there are, and the spirit of the weekend. You will receive a tailored proposal within 24 hours. The detail of the spaces, the capacities and the private-hire format is on the weekend with friends and family gatherings page, and the gates will be open when you arrive.
