Quirky trio of Loire sights pushes beyond the chateaux

Tired of chateaux? Here are three options a bit off the beaten Loire Valley track to add a bit of variety to your visit.

Fontevraud Abbey
I failed to do my research.

My head was solidly stuck in the 12th century. I knew this place as the retirement home of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the location of the monumental tombs she'd supervised for the Angevin dynasty she and her husband Henry II fought to establish. I'd stared at plaster casts of those tombs for years in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, and was keen to see the real things and to feel a bit closer to one of my favourite women in history.

Elevated by that 

great queen, Fontevraud became one of the most powerful abbeys in France and a home to a long line of rich and powerful women. It was the abbey of choice for an illustrious line of royal daughters (both legitimate and not) who conducted influential careers from this religious power base.

Typical of me, however, I had lost interest with the modern age. So I missed the fact that the religious order had been kicked out at the revolution and had not returned. The buildings were gutted and put to civil use. Five floors had been inserted into the great abbey church and the whole complex turned into a prison in which the incarcerated worked as factory labourers. It wasn't restored and opened to the public as a historic site until 1985. The church restoration wasn't complete until 2006. Part of the complex has been turned into a hotel and conference centre.

All of which means that there's not much to see. The church is a mostly-featureless white box with clear glass windows. The four surviving Angevin tomb figures (Eleanor and Henry II, their son Richard "the Lionheart" and their son John's wife Isabella of Angouleme) sit on modern plinths in the middle of the nave; their reproductions in London, lying in filtered light amongst copies of Northern Europe's greatest architecture, are arguably more dramatic. The cloisters and their garden are pretty, but unremarkable. An impressive beehive-style cloister kitchen is unrestored and not open to the public. The most interesting site is probably the chapter house, where the stations of the cross are painted in lunettes with high-ranking nuns of the time included in the action. Some are at quiet prayer, but others look directly at you. Obviously intelligent, witty and formidable ladies, I would have liked to have known more about them but explanatory materials stuck to the art.

These drawbacks don't deter the French, who have an admirable skill at mixing the historic and the modern (I give you the Louvre pyramid) and at using technology to make something more than it is. In the church, you can "draw" scenes on a computer screen and then project them into a frame of gothic arches to replace the long-gone wall paintings. There's a fascinating exhibit in the cloisters exploring power in organisation and architecture, comparing the days of the abbey to those of the prison. As at Chaumont, they've added modern art installations throughout. The light sculpture in what was the nuns' dormitory is striking, though I wonder if the artist meant to make the room look like a chill-out lounge at a high end spa?

Musée des Blindés - Saumur
In an unimpressive series of old industrial buildings in suburban Saumur you'll find the world's largest collection of armoured fighting vehicles. More than 880.

There's plenty in this world I'd happy to explore in that quantity. Old Master paintings. Boulle furniture. Herbaceous perennials. Cooking ingredients. I'd even go for historic arms and armour (as I have happily in Vienna and at London's Wallace Collection.) But modern tanks and their cousins would have never seen my footfall had it not been for my husband. Who was happier than the proverbial kid in a candy shop. I, on the other hand, had the salutary experience of understanding how my husband feels when he's been persuaded to accompany me on a garden visit.

Even the uninterested will admit this is an impressive collection, especially of the WWII stuff. That's because many of the machines could be dragged in from the surrounding fields where they had been abandoned. It's a sobering reminder of how the pastoral paradise outside was once a horrific battleground. I liked the WWII photos of the tanks as they were found displayed next to the real thing. I also appreciated the dioramas that put the tanks in contemporary scenes, and a handful of displays that talked about the people involved.

But there wasn't nearly enough of this kind of thing for the casual observer. This is a resolutely old-style museum, with rooms of machines in their serried ranks, identified with technical specifications on labels beside them. The first room gives the early history of the tank in Europe. After that, each country gets its own section for armoured vehicles from WWII to the present. My husband says the German collection is particularly impressive. The real machine geek can even linger in a hall of engines. Lord help us. There is a hall of WWII luminaries, where awkward wax figures try to expand the story, but neither the style of display nor the information provided are very successful.

Bottom line: if you're mad about tanks or WWII, this is heaven. But the museum needs to do a lot more to make it an interesting and enjoyable experience for the less enthusiastic visitor.

Musée Poire Tapée - Rivarennes

This is an impressive story of a tiny village re-connecting with its history to create a tourist attraction.

In addition to vineyards, the Loire is thick with apple and pear orchards. Until the 1930s, that meant it was also a renown centre of dried fruit production ... one of the main ways to preserve and market those crops before the advent of refrigeration and long-distance distribution. With the modern age came a rapid collapse of the dried fruit industry. Within a generation, the village's status as a prosperous, esteemed provider to luxury grocers around the world disappeared. 

By the 1980s, just one very old lady named Leontine Guillon maintained the traditions: briefly poach the pears, peel them, seal them for two days into a pre-heated bread oven, then smash each flat with a custom-designed wooden press. In 1987, a group of locals decided to try to revive production as a hobby. It caught on. Thirty years later, they've replaced the bread ovens with commercial machines but the rest of the process is the same. Rivarennes now markets itself as the regional capital of the pressed pear, with seemingly every farm in the village advertising them for sale. 

At the village's heart you'll find a one-room museum which is essentially a marketing centre for all the producers of the village. There's not a great deal to see ... a short video, a collection of wooden presses, packaging from the industry's 19th century heyday and some posters explaining the process and the pear varieties used (Curé, Japoule, Queue de Rat, Colmar). Admission is free, but you'll want to spend the 3.25 euro for a tasting to complete your visit. Mine included bites of dried Colmar and Japoule to compare the difference between varieties, dried pear puree and a whole dried pear re-hydrated with sweet wine. The last, if served on a pool of custard with a few biscuits, would be a delicious dessert on its own. Rivarennes' pressed pears are recommended not just for sweet dishes, but considered a perfect accompaniment to duck and game. You can, of course, buy the pears here. They're slightly cheaper than in gourmet shops around the region, though still premium priced ... as you'd expect from a product that's both rare, and entirely hand-made.

Gentle Loire holiday starts with chateau, wine and a quiet holiday rental

I am a child of the riverlands.

Born where the broad, majestic Missouri flows into the even mightier Mississippi, flat stretches of agricultural floodplain bordered by forested limestone bluffs are in my blood. It might not be my favourite landscape (I'll always vote for a powdery beach leading to a coral reef), but it's the one that's inscribed on my DNA.

Perhaps that's why ... despite the foreign language, food and history ... I feel so comfortable in the Loire Valley. There are places along the Loire levee where you could easily be in the Chesterfield bottomlands, minutes from my childhood home. The grassy earth embankment falls down to a wide, meandering river with wooded banks and the occasional island. On the other side, fields of new-sewn wheat and corn stretch to little towns huddled against the bluffs. The trick of getting anywhere here is knowing w
here the bridges are, and some are as nail-bitingly narrow and rusty as my home state's worst. Even the grape vines are familiar, though the the result of a few centuries' more experience tends to be a more respected end product. And, just like my home, this is the nexus of many rivers. The Illinois, the Meremec and numerous other tributaries join the Missouri and Mississippi. Here, the Indre, Cher and Vienne complement the Loire, forming a rich ecosystem.

Of course, comparisons only go so far. This has been a much-desired crossroads of Europe for thousands of years, making it almost as lush in history and architecture as it is in agricultural produce.   It is also perhaps the ideal compromise location for Mr. and Mrs. Bencard.  I get one of the densest conglomerations of noteworthy stately homes anywhere in the world. It's hard to drive more than five miles here without some spectacular chateau's tower's rearing onto the horizon, and many are stuffed with gorgeous art and furniture. The bigger ones have spectacular gardens, but a casual drive is enough to delight a horticulturalist's eye ... especially at this time of year, when lilacs, wisteria, flowering fruit trees and iris are all blooming in profusion. The husband gets lots of history, much of it military. It's hard to believe it from today's placid, affluent landscape, but this whole area was a nasty front line in World War II. The Hundred Years war and the revolution left significant scars. You'll even find one of the world's most comprehensive tank museum's here.

If we get sick of each other's sightseeing preferences, it's a simple place to navigate on one's own. (The French kept that Roman fondness for straight roads that the Brits so quickly abandoned.) This is a place to feed our mutual passion for food and wine.   The latter, in fact, is one of the main reasons we're here. The husband (aka chief sommelier) is on the hunt for great light reds. They're produced here in Bourgueil, Chinon and Saumur, but rarely turn up in the UK. There's an equal profusion of quality whites, and even some surprises like sparkling red, all either impossible to get in the UK or far cheaper.

We're staying at a rental property (known as a gite in France) in Fondettes, on the outskirts of Tours. With Orleans, this is one of the two bustling urban centres of the Loire region, but by far the better choice when it comes to the sheer abundance of chateaux and wine regions. We can, if we wish, fill all 16 of our days with sightseeing without ever driving more than an hour; though some days will be spent simply, in the quiet repose offered by our holiday home.

Our holiday home is one of a trio of buildings sitting on a terrace cut into the ridge on the northern bluffs of the Loire. We can just glimpse the occasional glimmer of sunshine on the water, about half a mile away, behind trees, farm fields and the property's own sloping gardens ... now laden with lilac and fruit trees in heavy bloom. Our landlady, the gracious and genial Marie-Claude, lives in the middle; this is one of the outbuildings on either side of her home. I'd guess it was once a barn or garage.

Now it's been converted into a cosy space, with a sitting/dining area, kitchenette and bathroom downstairs, and a comfortable bedroom beneath timbered eves above. (A word of warning: the two are linked by a compact spiral staircase that's a hassle if you need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night; this is not a property for the less-agile.) The decor is bright and festive. Upstairs, you feel as if you've been wrapped in a Provencal tablecloth; downstairs, the high-ceilinged space is given warmth by wallpaper of butterflies supping at poppies and daisies, balanced by contrasting walls of elegant stripes. It's all very French. We have a choice of tables and lounge areas in the garden outside our door, and though Marie-Claude is just a stone's-throw away it's been very private because her primary entry and exit are beyond our view. We only see her when she drops by to make sure everything is going well.

There's WiFi, though not enough to support the Apple TV device we brought along. Thus our evening entertainment is videos run off our laptops. Attempting to understand French TV is probably more mental strain that we want on holiday.

Cooking is always a bit of a challenge in holiday homes. Though we have all the basics here ... two hobs, a microwave that doubles as an oven, essential cookware ... our ambitions have already overstretched our capabilities. Grocery stores here are filled with beguiling ingredients, and the temptation can be to create some magnificent stuff. After calcifying a once-magnificent duck breast and failing to thicken a red wine sauce properly without a bit of flour, we've cut back on our culinary aspirations. We did, however, remember to bring our own knives and a small box of our own herbs and spices; holiday rental essentials for the serious cook.

And cooking here is a must, because Fondettes is an oddly isolated place. While there is a village centre with a few shops and snack bars, it seems to basically be a sleepy commuter suburb of Tours. More historic properties are outnumbered by modern housing estates, big schools and an enormous, modern grocery store. You're more likely to find doctors' offices and hair-dressers than tourist shops and, sadly, there's neither bistro nor the classic bakery to pick up your daily bread within walking distance. On the positive side, it's incredibly quiet and the nearest village with tourist charm, Luynes, is less than two miles up the road. (Photo above, on the left.)

If you're thinking about renting a gite in France, it's worth remembering that most expect you to bring your own towels and sheets, plus basics like toilet paper, laundry detergent, washing up liquid, etc. It's therefore a much better option for those who can drive here; taking up packing sp
ace with all that stuff would be a hassle if you were flying. (Though you can arrange to hire sheets and towels from Marie-Claude.) If you're staying in one place for a week or more, however, this is fabulous value for money, at less than £60 a night for the two of us.

This is our third successful rental through HomeAway.com (known as VRBO in the States), making it my go-to resource for holiday homes. To check out and rent Marie Claude's gite for yourself, visit this page.