Loire Valley Historic Towns: Tours, Amboise, Blois, Chinon and Saumur

The towns are where your days start, and where you sleep between them. Pick the right one and half the driving disappears. Comparing Loire Valley day tours? These five towns hold the stations, the tourist offices and the meeting points.

The five towns compared: station, sights and departures

All five sit on the Loire or one of its tributaries, and all five have a railway station. What separates them is what you can walk to and which tours pick you up.

Tours: the tourist office every minivan leaves from

Tours is the easiest base without a car. The TGV from Paris Montparnasse stops at Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, and a short connection brings you into the centre. Most shared tours from the valley meet outside the tourist office at 78-82 rue Bernard Palissy, so a hotel near it saves you an early taxi.

You eat well here too. Les Halles, the covered market, is the town's food hall, and an open-air producers' market sets up beside it on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. From Tours you reach Vouvray's cellars in a morning and Chenonceau or Villandry in a day.

Amboise: château, Clos Lucé and the Sunday market

Amboise packs the most into the shortest walk. The royal château, with Leonardo da Vinci's tomb in its chapel, sits above the town. Clos Lucé, his last home, is a few minutes away on foot. On Friday and Sunday mornings the market fills the riverbank, and the Sunday edition runs to more than 200 stalls.

Amboise station is a 10-minute walk from the château, with direct trains from Tours and Paris Austerlitz. Several château days also collect you at the Amboise tourist office at 9:30, half an hour after their Tours pickup. It is the base to choose if you want evenings by the river.

Blois: the royal château by the station

Blois is the town for Chambord. Château de Chambord is 25 minutes away by road, and a Rémi shuttle bus runs to it from Blois-Chambord station. The town has its own royal château above Place Louis XII, where the market gathers 100 to 130 traders on Saturday mornings. Blois is also further east than Tours, which shortens the drive to Chambord and Cheverny but lengthens it to Villandry.

Blois château's prices and hours are not printed here, because we have not read them on the château's own page. Check them before you go.

Chinon: the fortress town in Cabernet Franc country

Chinon sits on the Vienne under its Royal Fortress, which opens every day except 1 January and 25 December. You pay €12.50 for an adult. The town is also the centre of a red-wine appellation of 26 communes on both banks of the river, made mostly from Cabernet Franc, which is why the bike and picnic days in the vineyards start here.

Thursday is market day, with 90 to 130 traders across Place Jeanne d'Arc and the streets around it. Stay in Chinon if wine comes first and château-hopping second; the big châteaux east of Tours are a long drive away.

Saumur: tuffeau cellars and sparkling wine

Saumur marks the western end of most visits. Its château stands on a rock above the Loire, opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, and houses a decorative arts museum and a horse museum. The château's own site gives the road times: 40 minutes from Tours, 20 minutes from Angers and about two and a half hours from Paris.

Under the town and its hillsides run cellars cut into tuffeau, the soft white stone the châteaux are built from. Sparkling Saumur matures in them, and the e-bike wine ride starts from the car park at Place Notre-Dame des Ardilliers.

Which tours leave from which town

Start with where you sleep. Paris-based travellers have their own days with hotel pickup or an Avenue de Wagram meeting point, covered on how to get to the Loire Valley.