Published by Andrew on 8 January 2018
We received the following enquiry about family friendly cycling routes in the Loire valley. Here's our response.
Chateau de Chenonceau, 32km east of Tours. Photo: Ra-smi/Wikimedia
Question: I hope you can help me. My family and I are returning to the Loire Valley in 2018 for our holiday and are staying in the vicinity of Château de Chambord. We have stayed in the region twice before and are looking for some new family friendly cycle paths. We have done all of the ones around the chateau on our previous visits and would like therefore to try some new off-road family friendly rides (up to 8km in length). Are you able to recommend any that are within approximately one hour of the château by car. Alternatively, are there any good websites/books that you could recommend as all of the websites I have found so far only seem to cover tours from one end of the valley to the other, which are not the type of rides we are looking for.
Lyn wrote back: You could drive east (or get the train with your bikes) to Orleans. There are many local, signposted circular routes around there, plus more chateaux. See here for for more details.
Alternatively you could head west to Tours – you can download PDFs of the local 'boucles' (circuits) at the bottom of this page. As with the area around Chambord, these routes are mostly either well signposted or marked on locally available maps.
See also Cicerone's Cycling the River Loire guidebook for general info.
