You could do this without us, or reserve a level walking week along the middle Loire
Flat ground, two beds, one short train between them, and a week that sits on the first of our four steps: all nine nights are yours to arrange in an evening, and this office would rather write that down than pretend otherwise. Reserve a level walking week along the middle Loire if you would sooner somebody else did the telephoning.
- Starting figure, per person
$2,260
- Nights
- 9
- beds you will learn
- 2
- Country
- France
- How much of this you could arrange without us
- you could arrange all of this yourself
Confirmed as a final figure once the supplier holds the dates. Getting to the country is not included.
- Whatever is agreed comes back to you in writing from the supplier, before any money moves.
- No card is asked for on this site and none is stored: the supplier takes payment on its own terms.
- A request sent through the form is answered in writing within one working day.
Ground that does not go up
Between Amboise and Saumur the water runs across a floor of gravel and sand about sixty five kilometers long, and over that distance it falls roughly twenty meters. That is three centimetres in every hundred, which is to say nothing at all. There are three surfaces to walk on. The crown of the earth flood bank is mown grass, four to six meters above the meadows and level for kilometers at a stretch. Below it the marked cycle route is crushed limestone, hard packed and wide enough for two abreast. Down on the bar itself there is loose sand and shingle, and that is the one place a weak ankle will object; it is also entirely optional. The valley sides do rise, forty to sixty meters of soft white rock about a kilometer back from the water, and this week never goes there. Out and back, all nine days, stays on the floor. The only stair you are likely to meet is the one into your own room, which is why the office asks about that before it asks about anything else.
How the nine nights are shaped
Four nights at the eastern end near Amboise, then a local train of about fifty minutes down the valley, then five nights at Saumur. Two beds in nine nights is on purpose. Unpacking twice is roughly the ceiling for anybody already spending their patience on the walking, and a third move would eat a day at each end of it. Days run six to fourteen kilometers, which at a slow pace with stops is three to five hours, and each half of the week has one day with nothing in it. Bags go by car on the changeover; you carry water and a coat. An ordinary day looks like this: out along the bank after breakfast, lunch between noon and two because after two the kitchens close, an hour in the afternoon in a cave dwelling cut into the soft rock or a walled kitchen garden laid out in squares, then a bus or a local train back if the legs have finished early. Nothing starts before nine in the morning, and nothing is compulsory.
The months that behave, and the ones that do not
Three months carry this week: the two before high summer and the one straight after it. Tours averages a daily high near twenty degrees in May, twenty four in June and twenty two in September, with eight to eleven wet days in each and about sixty millimeters of rain across September. July and August reach twenty seven, and the flood bank carries no shade whatever; that is a fact to weigh rather than a warning. The river changes more than the air does. By late August it is down to sandbars and standing pools, wide and shallow and half dry, and you can walk out onto ground that stood under two meters of water in February. The banks were raised because of that water, after the floods of 1846, 1856 and 1866, and the marks cut into walls in the riverside villages still show where it reached. From November to March the valley is gray, wet and mostly indoors, and the office does not sell this week then.
What the office would still be for
Everything in these nine nights is public. The paths are waymarked and free, the trains run to a timetable anybody can read, the rooms take direct reservations, and the two houses that people usually want a morning for sell tickets at the door. So arrange it yourself if the arranging is part of the pleasure. You will not do it worse than we would, and there is nothing in it we are holding back. What the office actually does is narrower than the word agency suggests. It telephones the two places and asks what people forget to put in an email: how many steps to the room, whether the bath has a bar, whether the dining room is up half a flight, whether the car firm in the second town will take a reservation nine days out in September. Then it gets those answers in writing. Money never touches this desk. You settle with each place directly, and some weeks after you are home whoever supplied the beds sends the office a percentage of what you already paid. No charge of ours sits on the figure above.
Who should not reserve this week
This is built for somebody who cannot climb and has stopped arguing with it: a replaced knee, a hip that hates coming downhill, a heart with a number attached, a back that will do distance but not gradient. It also works for two people who walk at different speeds, because most stretches have a road or a rail halt within two kilometers and one of you can stop early without collapsing the day. It is wrong for anybody who wants height. For nine nights there is no looking down on anything; the valley is read across rather than from above, and that is not a taste everybody has. It is wrong in August, wrong for a pushchair on the sand bar, and wrong for anyone hoping for emptiness. This is a worked floodplain with a main road along the far bank and the cooling towers of a power station visible upstream on a clear day. And it is wrong for somebody who would rather do the phoning themselves, which, as above, is a good many people.
Short answers to the usual doubts
Can you reserve our flights to France?
No. Air and water passage sits wholly outside what this desk does, and no carrier is bound to it by any agreement, so there is nothing of the sort for us to sell. Your flights are yours to arrange. What people usually do is fly into Paris and take the fast train south, about an hour and five minutes from the Paris terminus to the station across the river from Tours, then a local service on to Amboise. Send us the arrival time once you have it and the first bed will be told to expect you late if it needs to be.
How does the office get paid?
By the suppliers, afterwards, and never by you. Each place bills you on its own terms and takes its own money; some weeks after you are home, a percentage of that finds its way back here. Nothing is taken at this end and no card number is held at this end. The practical consequence is the one we would want you to notice: there is no reason for this office to talk you into nine nights that do not fit, because a week that goes wrong pays us the same and costs us the afternoon.
What does from $2,260 per person cover?
Nine nights in two rooms, each with its own bathroom and each reachable without stairs unless you tell us otherwise; breakfast at both; bags moved by car on the changeover day; two half days out with a guide who lives in the valley; and the local rail fare between the two towns. It does not cover lunches, dinners, entry to the houses and gardens, anything you drink, or getting to France and home again. It does not cover documents or insurance of any kind either. This office handles neither and will not advise on them. The figure is a starting point for the shoulder months and settles once both places quote for your dates.
One of us uses a walking stick. Will this hold up?
Partly, and the parts are worth naming. The grass crown and the crushed limestone route are both fine with a stick and usually fine with a rollator. The sand bar is not. The cave dwellings cut into the rock have uneven thresholds, and one or two have a step down into the dark. The village lanes are cobbled in patches, and two of the four rooms we would normally put forward have a lift. What the office can add is the telephoning: the number of steps in writing rather than guessed from a photograph. If those answers come back badly we will say the week does not suit and stop there.