The Loire Valley is a mere
three and a half hours from Brussels on the train (including a metro journey
across Paris) or five hours by car. You
can visit it in grand style, staying in a chateau, or on the cheap, as I
did. I chose my hostelries mostly from
the Logis de France guide, small hotels in the 65-85 euro
bracket, with good restaurants attached.
In the run-up to Easter, most of these hotels were underoccupied so you
could just turn up, although these days my nerves wouldn’t be able to stand the
uncertainty of finding myself without a bed.
I worked my way downstream from Orléans to Chinon, stopping off at
Bourgueil, Vouvray, Saumur and Chinon. Just to see the chateaux, you
understand. It was purely coincidental
that all these towns make stonking wine.
Le Pavillon Bleu, Olivet
Orléans is an elegant town built mostly in white stone. It’s smaller than you would expect of a regional capital, and most sights worth seeing have a Joan of Arc connection. It’s got quite a bourgeois feel to it, and it’s the sort of place where well brung up young men take their ancient mamas out for lunch. I stayed at Le Pavillon Bleu, a delightful olde-worlde hotel-restaurant in Olivet, just south of Orléans, on the banks of the peaceful Loiret. On weekends in summer it turns into a "Guinguette" - one of those olde worlde riverside open-air restaurants with accordion music and dancing, as seen in Auguste Renoir paintings. I arrived mid afternoon to find the place shut up, and a sign saying that the hotel opened at 5 p.m., so I went for a walk along the river path which was popular with the old dears from the old people's home along the road. I could think of worse places to retire. There are only four or five rooms, which overlook the courtyard and the river. My room had a gorgeous walnut "lit bateau" or sleigh bed.
The €33 menu
gourmand comprises no less than six courses - an "amuse-bouche"
to get your gastric juices going, a starter and main course of your choice,
then a "pré-dessert" before your chosen dessert, and finally "mignardises"
which I think used to be known as "petits fours" in the better class
of Harvester, with the coffee. I fell
into my sleigh bed a happy bunny and dreamed I was riding through the snows of
Siberia wrapped in furs with Omar Sharif, the tinkling of the rain on the
surface of the Loiret somehow transforming itself into the sound of sleigh
bells.
The next day I swung by
Chambord and Cheverny to Blois, and then on to Amboise. That’s four castles just in that last
sentence. Amboise on the left bank is a
delightful town stuffed with history.
The castle is the last resting place of Leonardo da Vinci, which is
reason enough to visit. I paid my
respects to the Maestro, whose presumed remains, as far as they could tell
after they had been chucked unceremoniously into the communal pit by the
revolutionary hordes in 1789, are interred in a special chapel under a marble
slab engraved in French and Italian.
Nice touch. About a mile down the
road is Le Clos Lucé, the mansion where Leonardo lived for the last 3 years of
his life as a guest of King Francis 1st.
Il Maestro
But can’t hang about, on to
Tours where I stayed in the Hotel du Manoir, a small hotel with
its own (small) car park, although it’s only 5 minutes walk from the main
railway station where you can park a car underground for €10
a day. This hotel didn’t have a
restaurant, so I had dinner in Le Bistro du Chien Jaune, an old
fashioned bistro next to the tourist office which does a pre-theatre menu for
theatergoers to the Salle des Congrès across the road. While I waited my turn, I tipped my head back
and looked at the original artwork on the ceiling. I had the €19.50 three course
"menu gourmand" and treated myself to a half litre of Chinon for €12.50.
Tours old town, place Plumereau
Tours is an eminently pleasant town which behaves as though it was the regional capital, although that honour falls to more sedate Orléans. It has a university, a cathedral, a big Préfecture, a big opera house, an old quarter, a market, a big station, the TGV, and, more importantly as far as I was concerned, a Monoprix, a Galeries Lafayette and a Printemps. The old quarter around Place Plumereau is delightful and stuffed with restaurants.
My next stop was Saumur,
which I reached via Bourgueil and St Nicolas.
You can tell you're in a wine growing region when the road into town is
lined with wine shops. The Hotel Cristal in Saumur has rooms
overlooking the Loire with a 180 degree view.
The rooms are clean and quiet, but I literally did have to open the
bathroom door to turn around. The hotel
restaurant Au Quai de la Loire offers a €19 gastronomic menu which
did not disappoint. I washed it down
with a half bottle of Réserve des Vignerons white Saumur for €11
extra.
Azay-le-Rideau
From Saumur, my westernmost point, I headed back east via Azay-le-Rideau, one of the fairytale castles. It sits in the middle of its own lake and has lots of pointy turrets where you might expect Rapunzel to stick her head out the window and empty her chamber pot. The roof space of one wing has been opened up to show off the magnificent eaves. French roof timbering has been classed as of exceptional cultural importance by UNESCO. In fact, the whole Loire Valley has been classed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It struck me that maybe UNESCO is not situated in Paris for nothing. I stopped by Rigny-Ussé where there is a gorgeous chateau that allegedly inspired Charles Perrault to write The Sleeping Beauty. They are milking that for all it is worth. They wanted a whopping €14 to visit, and you can't even get into the grounds for free. All of the chateaux charge, but usually €8 or €9.
I veered away from the
Loire to spend the night in Chinon at the Hotel Boule d'Or which is
situated on a pedestrian street. There
is free parking on the riverbank, a few minutes walk from the hotel. The town was gridlocked the day I arrived by
a huge crane on the river road. I read
in the local paper over breakfast the next morning that the crane had been
fishing out of the Cher a car which had been stolen from the very car park
where my car had spent the night.
Fortunately it was still there when I arrived. The hotel restaurant is called At'able
(geddit?) serving a superb menu for €22.40, with excellent
service by a charming young waitress who spoke good English. I had the honour of being the first person to
taste the first asparagus of the season, which came from a local supplier and
melted in the mouth. Only three tables
were taken on a Good Friday evening, two by British people, one by a young
American couple. Some French people came
in at 9:20 and were seated without a murmur.
There's no separate entrance to the hotel, but there's not much else to
do in Chinon so unlikely you'll be out past midnight.
Chenonceau
En route to Bourges I made a detour to visit the stunning Chateau de Chenonceau which is actually on the Cher river, although generally included in the Chateaux of the Loire. The €11 entrance charge here is entirely justified, as it is truly magnificent and extraordinarily well maintained, down to the fresh flower arrangements in every room. If you only do one chateau in the Loire region make it this one. It has a wing built out right across the river, which of course makes the river unnavigable. You couldn’t get planning permission like that these days. During the Nazi occupation of France, the Cher formed the boundary between Free France and the Occupied Zone, and resistance fighters were smuggled to safety through the basement of the Great Hall and the door that opens onto the opposite bank of the river. Chenonceau is the most visited castle in France after Versailles, and the car park was full of tour buses. However the gardens are vast, and there was no crush inside the castle.
Easter floral arrangement at Chenonceau
I must say the Loire region ticked all my boxes. The climate is temperate, the landscape is gentle and green, and the city of Tours has everything you could need, including not one but FOUR Irish bars; property prices are alarmingly reasonable; it's an hour and a bit from Paris on the train, has good public transport (like all French towns) including a new tram network under construction, and the food is amazing. You could eat your way round Tours every night of the year and never come back to the same restaurant twice. Every village in the region has at least a couple of top class restaurants. And then there is the wine.
Oh yes, and I nearly forgot
-- the chateaux.
