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Camp Chateau in Béduer is more in demand than Taylor Swift tickets right now. Here’s why.
By
Jessica Sulima
“I stayed at a women-only summer camp at a chateau in the French countryside, and yes, it was as dreamy as it sounds,” says travel influencer Allison Wolf—casually—in an Instagram Reel that has reached over 22.3 millionviewssince its posting last month. The clips that ensue—horseback rides in a primeval forest, two women carrying opposite ends of a baguette-filled picnic basket, collective dinners within a grand dining room—follow the current tide of TikTok conversations centered around the persistence of girlhood and embracing the nostalgia of summers past.
At Camp Chateau, located in the town of Béduer, in the southwestern Quercy region of France, campers awaken in their shared bunks (“bunk” might be an undersell, considering they are housed within a medieval hilltop castle). The women begin their days with sunrise yoga on the terrace, or head straight to breakfast. After enjoying some pastries and fruit, they’ll join in on a pre-selected activity: jammaking, watercolor painting, foraging, silent hiking, kayaking, the list goes on. Or they might decide—and are, in fact, encouraged—to do absolutely nothing.
At lunch time, each bunk room gets a picnic basket filled with items like French bread, cheese, pâté, quiche—and rosé, of course—to eat wherever they’d like on the grounds. After the chosen afternoon activity, it’s time for aperitifs in the courtyard, where there might be some live music, followed by a family-style dinner in the grand salle. At this point, in true camp fashion, the director, Tegwen, will hand out badges. “Who made jam today?,” they’ll ask, and a cacophony of “Me, me, me!” will follow. After dinner, campers might choose to sit outside for a while, gather for a movie or game night, or go straight to bed.
“We try to make it so that there’s nothing stressful happening at any time,” says Philippa Girling, an apt surname for the co-founder and CEO of Camp Chateau. “You can just opt in or opt out. That will be your choice.”
Before founding Camp Chateau, Girling spent nearly 30 years working in the banking sector, “which is fundamentally a patriarchal industry,” she says. “What I’ve found over the years is that what industries like that say to women, or to any minority, is, ‘We are so happy you are here. And we really want you to be successful. And we’ve built these DE&I programs to help you be successful. And here’s a mentor. Now, if you could just be less you and more like me, then you can do well here.’” The CEO had always been passionate about creating systems that cater to individuals, rather than asking them to fit an already existing mold.
Quercy has long held a special place in Girling’s heart. She spent childhood summers visiting the region with her family, during which everyone would engage in an inside joke of pointing out where the cabins or zip lines would go at their imaginary summer camp. Now based in California, Girling had never let go of her love for France. On Sunday mornings, she’d scroll through French-Property.com with her coffee, daydreaming of castles. When an alert for Chateau de Béduer popped up, she recognized it right away. Propelled by an intuitive feeling, though certainly not in the business of buying a chateau, Girling and her family booked a flight to France to take a closer look.
“So there we were standing in front of this beautiful chateau, and I was thinking, ‘What if we could make this something that women could come to where they don't have to work on themselves, they don't have to develop higher level leadership skills, or get to another level of power—they can just be for multiple days at a time’?”
So she took to Facebook to test the waters, asking which of her friends would be interested in the idea of a summer camp for women at a chateau in France—“Come as you are, do whatever you want,” as she described it. This was 2021, and the level of enthusiasm emboldened Girling to make a bid, which was, to her amazement, miraculously accepted.
She adopted a funding structure that would place the ownership in the hands of women, with 140 founding members and six equity investors. Founders invest money, get a 5% return, and are able to come to the camp for free each year. Equity investors hold partial ownership of the company, and in return, they get a portion of the profits. Since 2023, Camp Chateau has been a certified Triple SHE Mark Company, with 100% women and/or gender diverse individuals in management, creative, ownership, and board of directors. The camp officially opened its marble lion-guarded doors last year.
For Girling, it’s very important that Camp Chateau feel like a summer camp, rather than an all-inclusive resort—or even worse, a corporate offsite. That means no cheesy bonding exercises. “We just allow it to be completely organic, and it really happens very naturally that people find each other and become friendly,” she says. “We have a lot of campers from last year who now meet on a regular basis.” Though the camp holds an 18-plus-chaperone policy, Girling recalls a week in which an 18-year-old camper became best friends with the eldest guest, a woman in her late seventies.
Camp Chateau is completely sold out this year and next. Though Girling and her team invested in boosted marketing at the start, they found that inviting influencers like Allison Wolf and asking them to vlog their authentic experience garnered the most successful results. “We got over a million likes,” Girling says of Wolf’s Instagram post. “Followers went from 34,000 to 221,000. Our newsletter subscriptions went from about 7,000 to closer to 20,000. And we sold the whole of 2025 in five days.”
This year’s camp season will begin on July 2, running for 12 sessions, each six days long, with 50 campers per session. It’s a step up from last year’s 30, and to accommodate the growth, the camp has more than doubled its staff. A session next year will cost $2,250 euros per person, which includes accommodation, activities, food, and wine. You can try your luck snagging a spot after someone cancels, but Girling admits it’s a bit like getting Taylor Swift tickets. “We've had a couple of cancellations for the end of the summer this year,” Girling explains. “So we cancel it, we post it, and it's gone in five minutes. There must be people lurking with their refresh button.”
When Girling opened the camp last year, she was confident visitors would have a good time, but she did not expect everyone to immediately connect with the experience so deeply. “My own success criteria was, I want to walk through the grounds and hear women laughing, not raucous, ‘I'm in a comedy show laughing,’ just joyful, happy, relaxed, laughing,” she says, and to her surprise, it occurred on the very first night.
She recalls a time, on the last night of a session, when a woman was staring up at the walls of the chateau, trying to imprint the image of it in her head. When Girling asked her why she thought this experience had worked so well (her own theory was that it attracted many brave women, who hadn’t even seen a picture of the camp before signing up) the woman responded, "I think we all hoped it was real.”
Girling believes the chateau merely provides a low-stakes environment for women to be their authentic selves, guilt-free. It’s not a detox retreat, not designed for women in STEM, or open to families. It’s subversive precisely because it seeks to do nothing.
“A few men have contacted me to say, ‘Is there anything like this for men?,’ Girling says.
“I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s called the world.’”
