Belle Bois (Rylstone, NSW)

Location: Rylstone, NSW

Getting there: 3.5 hrs from Sydney

Sleeps: 6

Bedrooms: 3

The Property:

The Silver Award winner at the 2022 and 2021 NSW Tourism Awards in the Hosted Accommodation category, Belle Bois offers luxurious boutique accommodation. Surrounded by a World Heritage landscape in the world's widest canyon, the Capertee Valley, just over the Blue Mountains from Sydney.

Experience elegant country living and relax as you view local wildlife and the dramatic landscape from your spacious guest room and private terrace. Wander the two kilometres through grassland and stands of trees to the creek at the back of the property, keeping an eye out for signs of wombats, echidnas, long neck turtles, and dainty native flowers among the grasses.

The Great Room at Belle Bois has a convivial atmosphere. This is where guests mingle and chat around the fireplace, enjoy the complimentary two-course breakfast, or a French Mediterranean style table d’hote dinner, all featuring local produce.

Before you arrive and throughout your stay, your host Wendy offers local guidance so you can make the most of your quiet break or active getaway exploring the food, wine, historic, and natural features of the area.

About your local community:

Variety is the flavour of our local community, which extends from the Capertee Valley to the nearby towns of Rylstone and Kandos. Meet some locals from the rural properties in the valley at the farm market and café, or around other community facilities like the historic church in Glen Alice.

In Rylstone, early settlement and being a centre for farmers can be seen in the streetscape. The retail scene here has developed an eclectic flavour including, among other things, the work of local artists and crafts people, and a yum cha and tea house, which people often travel from far away to visit. The museum in Kandos provides the backstory to this town and its cement factory which built the Sydney Harbour Bridge, it’s a centre for the Dabee people, and has a growing arts community and the biannual Cementa festival. Nearby, is Rylstone Olive Press and two wineries, the boutique scale Naked Lady and De Beaurepaire Wines, producing cool-climate French style wines.

What is your favourite thing to do at this property:

Experiencing the heightened intensity of the natural world all around.

I love to see our guests enjoy the quiet, the space, having nature all around – kangaroos on the paddock, birds everywhere, flowering gums and wattles, the marks, if not a sighting, of wombats and echidnas – and stepping outside after dinner, waiting for your eyes to adjust, to see a sky full of stars and the sweep of the Milky Way.

What is your favourite trip close by:

Once guests have soaked up the scale and spectacle of the Capertee Valley, I point them to Dunn’s Swamp-Ganguddy. It is the most atmospheric place.

A scenic stretch of water, pagoda rock formations, colourful reeds and water birds, Lyrebirds in the surrounding bush, indigenous rock art, it is a startlingly beautiful place in the bush. Swim, fish, kayak, walk a gentle few metres, or a few kilometres, and soak it in.

Guests should not forget to pack their… camera, from phones to cameras with lenses as long as your arm, you’re sure to catch the glowing light on the sheer valley cliffs, a beautiful sunset over the surrounding mountains, the night time glory of the Milky Way, kangaroos, wallabies or perhaps a rare bird.

How did you come to to offer accommodation in the bush?

The journey to opening Belle Bois in January 2020 began during travels with my late partner, Geoff, in regional Australia. When we decided it was time for a change from our corporate careers. Prompted by our personal connections and experiences in our professional lives, a bush and a rural lifestyle had been calling us for awhile.

We set out to offer the warm hospitality we would like to find alongside comfort and luxury in a nice place to stay. Good food, good wine, and a great place to be, were also important. Our property search brought us to the Capertee Valley, which won our heart, and we were keen to share what we had found with others. So close to Sydney, but with a such a sense of being so far away from the built-up and busy. In a community where caring for the land is important, planting trees and building habitat for native birds and animals alongside farming, all surrounded by national parks.

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