A charming 19th century maison de maître

Snooker Hall

Turn left in the main entrance hall to the Château to get to the snooker room, which features a full-size UK-style snooker table (which can also be used for playing pool for those of you who misspent your youth 'chasing the eight ball'); like many parts of Château Mitaud, the table has its very own story, where the foreign owner of the company sourcing and shipping it from China failed to mention to Andrew that they had never shipped a snooker table to anywhere before! They first of all shipped it without sending the original bill of lading, so French customs refused to clear it through customs, then the local clearance agent refused to act until they had been paid in full, and then they claimed it was a port-to-port when in fact Andrew had agreed a door-to-door delivery. The final straw came when the company they hired to deliver the table cited union rules on health and safety that prevented them from delivering the five pieces (each weighing over 200 Kg) to the door of the Château, and literally dumped them in the middle of the road (we were directing traffic around them) and drove off!

In the end we had to borrow our next door neighbour's tractor and literally and metaphorically pick up the pieces and deliver them to the door of the Château, at which point we had to hire another local company to assemble the table (at great expense).

Another feature of the snooker room is the "Wine Hall of Fame": we have dedicated one wall of the snooker room as a place where you can pay homage and stick your favourite wine case "plaque", as a permanent record of your visit to Château Mitaud. We have plenty of space left, so please think of us when visiting wineries around Bordeaux: for this we only have two rules: choose a case with some kind of specific picture or artwork (words by themselves are a little dull and uninspiring) and no repeats (visit the wall first and work out which ones to avoid)!

Table Tennis and Badminton

There is a table tennis table and badminton nets and racquets available to guests on request.

Board Games

A variety of board games (Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, chess etc.) and childrens board or similar games are available on request.

Pinball

There is a pinball machine inside the music room: you may not need to feed coins into "le flipper" (as they say in French) to play depending on the machine's mood (if you do, a supply is inside the front door). Appropriately, as Andrew is a lawyer by trade, the theme of the pinball machine is Judge Dredd. You may even get to hear the tag line. "I am the law" from the eponymous film starring Sylvester Stallone.

Table Football

The table is located in the corridor between the music room and the swimming pool behind the kitchen.

Football

There is a goal in the garden for those who love "the beautiful game" (like Andrew, although he despairs of the performance of the England team or the Scots (he is half Scottish) or the Irish for that matter (he has Irish grand parents on his father's side)), but then again if you love football and come from China, he might ask you how hard can it be to find 11 good players from a population of over 1.3bn – the best answer he has heard is that half of those are women and it is far easier to find 11 good women (who are not busy holding up half the sky) as their relative success in competition shows!

Basketball

Those who prefer the NBA to the Premier League can practice their free throws with the full size basketball post located at the far end of the tennis court. The height of the basket can be adjusted manually to allow those who wish to show their "dunking" skills off but can't quite make it up all the way (any more) to save "face".