Visiting the Loire Valley châteaux

We’ve travelled through the Loire Valley on three separate trips.

The first was in January 2018, when it was just the two of us, Sandrine and me. We were driving back towards Paris after New Year’s Eve and decided to spend four days exploring some of the region’s best-known châteaux.

Because it was the middle of winter, we deliberately skipped some of the places mainly famous for their gardens and focused on the interiors instead: Chinon, Chenonceau, Amboise, Clos Lucé, Cheverny…

We also stayed in some beautiful historic properties and, somewhere in the middle of all that, managed to lose almost an entire day to food poisoning while staying in an actual château.

Chambord at Christmas

Chambord came at the end of that first trip.

Even after visiting several castles during the week, the change of scale was striking.

Chambord is not simply a château. It stands at the centre of an enormous enclosed forest estate surrounded by kilometres of walls.

In January, the interior was still decorated for Christmas, with traditional wooden games set up throughout some of the rooms.

And then, of course, there is the famous double-helix staircase.

Two stairways spiral around each other, allowing two people to climb at the same time, occasionally seeing one another through openings, without ever actually meeting.

Leonardo da Vinci is often linked to its design, although the attribution remains uncertain.

The gardens of the Loire Valley châteaux

In 2022, we returned to the Loire Valley.

This time, we were travelling with Victor, who was two years old, and it was summer.

Rather than revisit the same places, we explored other châteaux: Azay-le-Rideau, Rivau, Villandry, Ussé and Langeais.

Travelling with a child also changed the rhythm.

At Azay-le-Rideau, Victor had his nap beside the Indre while we sat nearby. At Villandry, the huge terraced gardens became almost more important to us than the château itself.

A walk through the Chambord estate

Then came our third trip to the Loire Valley, in February 2025, and a return to Chambord.

This time, it was for Sandrine’s birthday.

We came with Victor and Glasgow, our beagle, then a four-month-old puppy, and rented a small house in Meung-sur-Loire with an enclosed garden just opposite the river.

Victor collected eggs from the chickens, Glasgow explored the garden, and we deliberately planned far fewer visits than on our earlier trips.

On Sandrine’s birthday, we returned to Chambord.

But rather than visit the interior again, we took Glasgow and explored the estate on foot.

That’s the route shown on this map.

We passed the château, walked around it and joined the canal. The water is actually the River Cosson, which was diverted centuries ago to feed the château’s moats.

A loop of roughly four kilometres follows both sides of the water and leads towards the Canardière observation point, which is particularly useful during the deer rut.

And perhaps this walk gave us a better sense of the scale of the place.

Once the château disappears behind you, it doesn’t take long before you’re simply walking through forest beside the water.

The estate covers more than 5,000 hectares. It is the largest enclosed forest park in Europe, ringed by a wall 32 kilometres long.

So this map is about Chambord, but also about three different ways we experienced the Loire Valley.

First, the two of us as a couple, in winter, trying to see as much as possible.

Then returning with Victor in summer, when gardens and slower days became part of the trip.

And finally, coming back with an older Victor and Glasgow, with almost no schedule at all: simply walking through the grounds of a château we already knew.