Abbaye de la Bussière, Burgundy

The hotel: thank heavens for monks. They have spent history seeking out the loveliest spots on God’s earth, putting up sublime buildings and then bequeathing them to posterity, which, quite often, has had the good sense to turn them into luxury hotels.

This tells us much about the movement of ages – from sandals and silence to champagne and truffles – but who’s to say the soul needs starving? Not me, as I sit in the Abbaye de la Bussière in remotest Burgundy.

Ascetics be damned. I haven’t had to till the fields or illuminate manuscripts to feel this way. In truth, I haven’t had to do much of anything since driving in the gates, through the 17-acre park, round the lake and up to the 900-year-old, honeystoned pile. Youthful staff have shouldered responsibility for my wellbeing, furnishing smiles, drinks and guidance along corridors and terraces whose negotiation would otherwise require a GPS.

Clive Cummings is the 39-year-old British owner of this self-contained little world. Until recently, the Cummings family ran the equally venerable Amberley Castle in Sussex. They moved to France after learning that the abbey was for sale. They visited and bought it the same day, from the Archbishop of Dijon.

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Three years and €6m on, the Abbaye provides monastic life reviewed and corrected for the comfort-seeking classes. Along the upper gallery, you may slip from the hunting lounge (sofas, great medieval fireplace, boar’s head, armour) via the ladies’ lounge (softer all round, no dead animals) to the large and comfortable music room.

Down the stairs, the arcaded grand hall benefits from a lack of monks (splendid fellows, but a bit eerie en masse). Outside, from the chapel you cross the stream to the vintage wine press and on through woodland to the lake and stout outbuildings.

Locals protested loudly at the arrival of the Cummingses – Anglo-Saxon money-makers colonising French heritage, that sort of thing. Most have been won round, but a couple hold out. It’s a promising sign. In France, a project is worthless if nobody’s objecting. This evening, though, all is the deepest peace. I retire to the music room with a glass and religious thoughts. They echo those of Cardinal Richelieu: “If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good?”

The rooms: in the good old days, they would have crammed a dozen Cistercians into the space taken by my bedroom. There’s carved oak furniture and enough drapes to decorate a coronation. Dreaming of this sort of luxury would have kept monks in confession for a month.

They might, too, have been foxed by the contemporary granite’n’tiling bathroom. So was I. No matter how I tried, water from the monsoon-head shower edged out across the floor. I should have had a spa bath instead, but I don’t have that kind of patience. I do, however, have just enough to sample the provided half-bottle of Crémant de Bourgogne fizz.

The food: post bubbly, there are more aperitifs in the upper gallery, then it’s downstairs to a restaurant a little like a scaled-down cathedral but warmer, with better service and infinitely better nibbles. Before opening, Cummings thought he might take revenge on Raymond Blanc by dishing up English food in his French abbey. Sagely, he decided against it, and within a year, 28-year-old chef Olivier Elzer had bagged a Michelin star.

This is both astonishing and, after the waltz of dishes, unsurprising. I like to leave a little to the imagination, so I’ll just say “scallops with truffles”, “foie gras with Sichuan pepper”, “snails in champagne” and “the finest Charolais fillet I’ve eaten”.

The surroundings: most of the great Burgundy vineyards are within spitting distance. Nuits-St-Georges is to hand, as, more interestingly, is Beaune. And leave time for the higher Hautes Côtes, where the land is wilder and the wines demand less deference. The Ouche valley (pronounced “Oosh”) slots in behind, a gloriously hidden stretch of hills, forest and villages where they’re still wondering what happened to Joan of Arc. But you might not venture that far. To get the most out of this place, you don’t have to go much beyond the abbey gates. If, indeed, at all.

Abbaye de la Bussière, La Bussière-sur-Ouche; 00 33 3 80 49 02 29, www.abbayedelabussiere.fr; doubles from £176. Dinner menus from £48. La Bussière-sur-Ouche is a six-hour drive from Calais, near enough to the A6 and A31 motorways. Lyon is two hours away: fly there with British Airways (0844 493 0787, www.ba.com), EasyJet (www.easyjet.com) or Aer Lingus (0818 365000, www.aerlingus.com)