A book club retreat for women, or any reading group: a weekend around one table in the French Jura
By Robin — your host · sources at the end · 23 October 2026 · 4 min read · Our method
A book club retreat for women, or for any reading group, is a weekend in a house where everyone fits around one table, with rooms quiet enough to finish the book, walks for the arguments and a kitchen for the long dinner. Most searches end on hotel packages instead. This page shows how a reading group runs such a weekend at Jura 835.
What does a reading group actually need?
Strip away the packages and the list is short. A table where the whole club sits at once, with nobody at a side table. Rooms where a slow reader can finish the last chapters without feeling antisocial. Somewhere to walk when the discussion heats up. A kitchen, because the best conversations happen while chopping. And a place that belongs to the group alone for the weekend, so the talk can run past midnight without a hotel bar closing around it. A whole house meets every item; most venues meet a few. Size decides the rest: up to 8 readers fit this house, and a bigger club needs a second venue or 2 weekends.
Which table, which rooms?
Jura 835 was built for a group: 124 m² on one level, with 3 bedrooms for 6 to 8 people and a long table in the main room. The wood stove is the natural centre of an evening session; the 400 m² garden is the daytime one when the weather allows. Bedrooms double as reading rooms, and the fibre connection (1 Gbit/s) lets a member who cannot travel join a session by video. How we size the house for eight explains how the beds and bathrooms work for a group that size, and the whole house, one group why we never rent by the room.
What does the weekend look like?
A weekend like this tends to follow the same script. Friday evening: arrival, a simple dinner, no book talk yet. Saturday morning: a walk from the gate, the former tram line giving 11 km of gentle forest track that can be cut short at any point. Saturday afternoon: the main discussion, with the stove lit even in May. Saturday evening: the long dinner, where the real opinions come out. Sunday: a late breakfast, the choice of the next book, and a last walk before the cars leave. Nothing in that script needs a facilitator or a schedule on the wall.
Where do you walk between chapters?
The house stands 835 m up in the Haut-Jura, above the village, with spruce forest and meadows starting at the garden gate. Lac des Rouges-Truites is 5 min by car (calculated from the house in October 2026), for a loop of 3.8 km with a view. For a club that likes an outing, Salins-les-Bains and its thermal baths are 45 min down the road, whose caldarium runs at 37 °C according to Jura Tourisme; an afternoon in warm water suits a club that argued all morning. Pick by the mood: the tram line for a club that walks, the lake loop for one that would rather talk, the baths for a wet Saturday. Our thermal baths page lists hours and options.
Screens, or no screens?
Some clubs want a weekend with no screens at all; others need the news in the morning. Both work here. The house has nothing that demands a screen, and the village of 203 inhabitants, according to the interior ministry’s census figures, offers no distraction after dark. Bring more books than you will read. Renting a house for a digital detox describes the strict version, for clubs that want to turn the weekend into a pact.
Who cooks, and what?
There is no caterer and no restaurant in the house, so the kitchen is yours. A simple split works: one pair cooks Friday, another Saturday lunch, everyone the Saturday dinner. Comté from a local fruitière (a cooperative dairy), bread from the valley, and wines from the Jura vineyards an easy drive away, including vin jaune, the region’s unusual yellow wine, for those who like a debate about taste as well as text. Nobody washes up alone; that is also where the next book gets chosen.
How does the club get here?
Geneva airport, 1 hr 20 min off on our usual route, is the natural meeting point for members coming from different countries, with a hire car or two. Paris passengers reach Frasne in 2 hr 48 min on the direct service; the station lies 40 min short of the village, so one pick-up covers a group arriving together. Members based in Switzerland drive in from Lausanne or Bern in an afternoon.
What it costs, and how to ask
We let the whole house, €4,200 and up for a week; a long weekend outside school holidays can be agreed. Divided among a club of eight, that is a reasonable price for a place nobody else uses. Write to us with your dates, how many readers you are and whether anyone needs the single-level layout for a particular reason. We will say plainly if the house works for your club, and we will not suggest a wine tasting unless you ask.