Loire Valley Chateaux Route

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Orleans

   Orléans is the city of Joan of Arc, and it takes this seriously. In the spring of 1429, during the Hundred Years' War, the English had besieged the city for months, and a seventeen-year-old peasant girl who claimed to hear saints arrived with a relief force and, in the space of nine days, lifted the siege. The victory turned the war, and the city has celebrated it every year since, with a festival held between 29 April and 8 May. A statue of Joan on horseback stands in the main square, the Place du Martroi, and a reconstructed house of the period shows how she lived while she was here.

   Read the complete Orléans write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Orleans is where the day begins. Next is Chambord.

2. 2. Chambord

   Chambord is absurd in the best way. François I began it in 1519 as a hunting lodge, and what rose out of the flat forest of the Sologne was a château with some four hundred rooms, a skyline of turrets, chimneys and lanterns like a miniature city, and a famous double-helix staircase in the centre, where two people can climb at once without ever meeting. Legend credits Leonardo da Vinci, who spent his last years not far away at Amboise, with the idea. Scholars treat the attribution with caution, but it is a good story and nobody has proved it wrong.

   Read the complete Chambord write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Chambord comes up about 56 km into the recorded legs. Next is Blois.

3. 3. Blois

   Blois is a town built on a slope, and the château is the reason you see it from miles away. It rises above the Loire on a spur of rock, a jumble of different eras in a single courtyard: a medieval hall, a Gothic wing from the time of Louis XII in brick and stone, a Renaissance wing with a spectacular open spiral staircase, built for François I, and a classical wing by François Mansart. Four centuries of French taste, neatly stacked, and all of it was at one time a royal residence.

   Read the complete Blois write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 73 km into the recorded legs you reach Blois. Next is Chenonceau.

4. 4. Chenonceau

   Chenonceau is the château built across a river, and nothing prepares you for how elegant that looks. A long gallery, two storeys high, spans the Cher on a row of arches, so that the building seems to float on the water, with the slow green current flowing underneath. It is called the Ladies' Castle, and the label is earned, because for centuries women shaped it. Thomas Bohier, a royal financier, began the main block around 1513, and his wife Katherine supervised the work. Then Henry II gave the château to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who laid out the gardens and built the bridge across the river.

   Read the complete Chenonceau write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Chenonceau, about halfway. Next is Amboise.

5. 5. Amboise

   Leonardo da Vinci is buried in Amboise, in a small chapel in the grounds of the château, and he came here at the invitation of François I, who gave him the manor house of Clos Lucé, a few hundred metres away, and a pension. He died there in 1519, aged sixty-seven. The house is now a museum with models of his inventions, built from his drawings, and a garden where some are displayed outdoors. Whether the bones in the chapel are really his is debated, since the church where he was first buried was largely destroyed in the Revolution, but the place has its own quiet dignity.

   Read the complete Amboise write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Amboise sits at 218 km, late in the day. Next is Tours.

6. 6. Tours

   Tours is a graceful city at the meeting of the Loire and the Cher, with a population of about a hundred and forty thousand and a long history of being the place where things happened. In the fourth century, a Roman soldier named Martin, who famously cut his cloak in half to share it with a beggar, became bishop here, and his tomb drew pilgrims from across Europe throughout the Middle Ages, making Tours one of the great spiritual centres of the Frankish world. The basilica built in his honour has been destroyed and rebuilt, and today two towers of the old church still stand beside a modern basilica.

   Read the complete Tours write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 156 km.