Mike Wells - The Loire Cycle Route

About the Author

Mike Wells has been a keen long distance cyclist for over 25 years. Starting with UK Sustrans routes, including the C2C across northern England and Ln Las Cymru in Wales, he moved on to long distance routes in continental Europe and beyond. These include cycling both the Camino and Ruta de la Plata to Santiago de la Compostela, an end-to-end traverse of Cuba, a circumnavigation of Iceland and a trip across Lapland to the North Cape.

This is the sixth in a series of cycling guides Mike has written for Cicerone, following the great rivers of Europe from their source. Previously he worked in the travel industry, organising and escorting tours all over Europe, including to many of the places visited in this book. While preparing this guide he cycled the entire route twice and explored various alternative routes before deciding which was the more attractive to describe in detail.

The Adlerweg

The Rhine Cycle Route

The Moselle Cycle Route

The Danube Cycleway Volume 1

The Danube Cycleway Volume 2

The River Rhone Cycle Route

THE LOIRE CYCLE ROUTE

FROM THE SOURCE IN THE MASSIF CENTRAL TO THE ATLANTIC COAST

by Mike Wells

2 POLICE SQUARE, MILNTHORPE, CUMBRIA LA7 7PY
www.cicerone.co.uk

Mike Wells 2017

First edition 2017

ISBN-13: 978 1 85284 842 2

This guidebook replaces Cycling the River Loire written by John Higginson and published by Cicerone in 2003.

Printed in China on behalf of Latitude Press Ltd

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All photographs are by the author unless otherwise stated.

Route mapping by Lovell Johns www.lovelljohns.com

Contains OpenStreetMap.org data OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA. NASA relief data courtesy of ESRI

Updates to this Guide

While every effort is made by our authors to ensure the accuracy of guidebooks as they go to print, changes can occur during the lifetime of an edition. Any updates that we know of for this guide will be on the Cicerone website (www.cicerone.co.uk/842/updates), so please check before planning your trip. We also advise that you check information about such things as transport, accommodation and shops locally. Even rights of way can be altered over time.

The route maps in this guide are derived from publicly-available data, databases and crowd-sourced data. As such they have not been through the detailed checking procedures that would generally be applied to a published map from an official mapping agency, although naturally we have reviewed them closely in the light of local knowledge as part of the preparation of this guide.

We are always grateful for information about any discrepancies between a guidebook and the facts on the ground, sent by email to updates@cicerone.co.uk or by post to Cicerone, 2 Police Square, Milnthorpe LA7 7PY, United Kingdom.

Front cover: Sully-sur-Loire Chteau is one of the prettiest chteaux on the Loire

CONTENTS

Notre Dame church towers over Marillais hamlet (Stage 24)

INTRODUCTION

To best discover a country you need to travel to its very heart and do so in a way that exposes you to the life going on around you. The River Loire passes through the heart of France and there is no better way of experiencing life in this great country than mounting your bicycle and following this river as it flows from the volcanic landscape of the Massif Central to the Atlantic Ocean. Its length of 1020km makes it the longest river in France. Here you will find a gentler and slower pace of life than in the great cities of Paris, Lyon or Marseille; and although there is some industry, it is less evident in the Loire Valley than alongside Frances other major rivers. Rather this is a land of agriculture and vineyards. The Beauce, north of Orlans, has some of the most fertile arable farmland in the country, while the rolling hills of the Auvergne and Burgundy produce high-quality meat and dairy products. The plains of Anjou grow much of the fruit and vegetables found in the markets and restaurants of Paris, often consumed with wines from premier Loire wine-growing appellations like Muscadet, Sancerre, Pouilly Fum and Vouvray. All this great food and drink can also be found in restaurants along the route.

Canal Latral la Loire at Chavanne (Stage 8)

Most French towns have weekly markets like this one in Vorey (Stage 3)

The Loire is known to the French as the Royal River a name it gets from the Loire Valleys long association with the kings of France when between the 15th and 17th centuries successive monarchs developed a series of ever more spectacular chteaux. Blois and Amboise were great palaces where the royal court resided to escape political turmoil in Paris. Chambord was a glorious hunting lodge, from where the king would spend long days hunting in the forests of the Sologne, while Chaumont was a home first for the mistress and later the widow of Henri II. The preference of the royal family for life along the Loire stimulated other members of the court to build their own chteaux in the area, resulting in over 50 chteaux recognised as heritage sites by UNESCO beside the Loire and its close tributaries. Although most of these were sequestered, damaged and looted during the French Revolution, 20th-century restoration has breathed new life into them and many can be visited.

Chteau de Chaumont was the home of King Henri IIs mistress (Stage 18)

In addition to secular buildings, the Loire Valley holds a strong religious presence. Le Puy-en-Velay, with a church and iron Madonna each perched on top of volcanic spires and a great basalt cathedral, is the start point of Europes most popular pilgrimage to Santiago in Spain. Tours has both a great cathedral that took so long to build it is in three different styles (Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance) and a basilica built to house the tomb of French patron saint, St Martin, a Roman soldier who became an early bishop of Tours. Other French saints encountered include St Benedict (founder of the Benedictine order), buried at Fleury Abbey in St Benot, and Ste Bernadette of Lourdes whose preserved body is on display in Nevers. Ste Jeanne dArc, a French national heroine who lifted the siege of Orlans and turned the tide of the Hundred Years War in favour of France, is widely commemorated particularly in Orlans itself. By contrast, the little village of Germigny-des-Prs has a church from the time of Charlemagne ( AD 806) that claims to be the oldest in France.