During my last prepandemic trip to the Loire Valley, in 2018, I found myself in a familiar place.
Ten years after my first road trip on the region’s castles route, I was back at the 500-year-old Château de Chambord, joining a small group of European and American tourists on a guided tour. Within seconds of meeting in the courtyard, we strained to admire the building’s ornate bell towers as our guide rattled out facts and data about King Francis I and his former hunting lodge. When she led us to the towers and scolded us for not listening, I felt a sense of déja vu.
This was my third visit to the Loire Valley from my home in Paris and the whole fairytale experience felt tired. Slightly beyond a nearby converted hotel had changed. Not the annoyed guide going through the motions, nor the throng of tourists being dropped off by the busload and herded through each room at a quick clip. The mind-boggling beauty stretching the length of the Loire River was also the same, which ultimately saved the trip.
A lack of change isn’t a bad thing: The UNESCO-listed region, which drew 9 million annual visitors to its cultural sites and 1 million cyclists before the pandemic, has been beloved for decades for its castles and the rolling vineyards that produce what oenophiles consider it France’s most diverse wine selection. But it arguably leaned too much on that past, depending on what seemed to be an endless stream of travelers interested only in castle hopping and cycling. With all the dramatic landscapes of the Loire and rising culinary stars, was this the best it had to offer?
It’s a question local chefs, hoteliers, entrepreneurs and regional leaders were asking themselves, even before the coronavirus hit, and set their sights on reinventing the area. By the time I returned to meet some of them in October 2021, the region’s changing identity was palpable.
“Our cycle route and castles have always been popular, but the fairy tale needed updating,” says François Bonneau, president of Centre-Val de Loire, the regional council that oversees the Loire Valley. “The French traveler has long associated it with excursions they took as schoolchildren, while the foreign traveler has a plethora of other destinations in the country to choose from. We needed to better express the identity of the region as a whole.”
The pandemic, he continued, only reinforced the need to promote the region differently, as visits to the valley’s top attractions fell 43 percent in 2020 and 32 percent in 2021 — alarming numbers for a region. where tourism accounts for 5 percent of the local GDP. or about 3.4 billion euros. Rethinking what Loire Valley travel should be like for the future, the focus has shifted from crawling into fairytale castles to experiences more firmly rooted in nature, food and art, while celebrating the region’s unique terroir.
That was evident from one of my first stops, at the 15th-century Château de Rivau. Patricia Laigneau, a co-owner, has actively worked to attract a wider audience to the storybook castle and sought-after wedding venue through food, devoting herself to the locally grown and cooked products in recent years.
Her two organic vegetable gardens were crescent-shaped and filled with forgotten or nearly extinct varieties of regional vegetables, such as sucrine berry, violet celery, and more than 43 varieties of colorful gourds. It is considered an official greenhouse for Loire Valley products by the Pôle BioDom’Centre, a regional center for the conservation of local biodiversity.
Homegrown products, in addition to a large number of herbs and edible flowers, have been used for years in Rivau’s no-nonsense café. But now they form the basis of the menu at Jardin Secret, Mrs. Laigneau’s new 20-seat gourmet restaurant, set up under a glass canopy and surrounded by rose bushes. She brought in chef Nicolas Gaulandeau, who hails from the region, to emphasize the local richness through dishes ranging from pumpkin served with pickles and smoked paprika to roasted rack of lamb with vegetables from the garden.
“Not only did our guests ask for something more, I saw the restaurant as an opportunity to show that the castles of the Loire can be champions of French gastronomy,” said Ms Laigneau.
Celebrating the land and its food is central to other new properties in the region.
In July 2020, Anne-Caroline Frey opened Loire Valley Lodges on 750 hectares of private forest in Touraine.
“Things have changed very slowly here, so of course the idea seemed wild,” said the former art dealer. “But we were fully booked almost immediately.”
A believer in the therapeutic benefits of trees and an avid collector of modern art, Mrs. Frey developed the property to offer guests a forest bathing experience – or shinrin-yoku, a Japanese wellness ritual involving spending time in nature as a means of slowing down and reducing stress. Reduce. The 18 tree houses – on stilts – are scattered throughout the forest and each, decorated by a different artist, has floor-to-ceiling windows, a private terrace with a jacuzzi and with a noticeable absence of wifi, a silence of their surroundings. One afternoon as I sat on my patio with a book, all I heard was the faint sound of some wild boars rummaging through fallen leaves.
A unique attraction is the guided forest bathing walk led by a local nature specialist. Guests can also view outdoor sculptures and paintings popping up throughout the building (handy markers, I discovered, returning to my lodge after dinner in almost complete darkness); cycle around the site or to the nearby village of Esvres; take a dip in the pool surrounded by larger-than-life art installations; take a bento box picnic in solitude or dine at the restaurant—if and when they are ready to rejoin the company of others.
The tree house concept is not the only departure from the tradition of sleeping in a castle.
“There have always been many B&Bs, but the limited range of hotels has only contributed to the region’s old-fashioned image,” said Alice Tourbier, co-owner of the spa and hotel Les Sources de Cheverny, which opened in September 2020.
The estate, which she owns with her husband, includes a restored 18th-century mansion and outbuildings spanning 110 hectares of farmland, fields and vines. Some rooms are set in stone houses around an orchard, others in a converted barn. Suites are available in a hamlet of wooden cabins overlooking a lake.
Ms Tourbier, who also co-directs Les Sources de Caudalie, a spa hotel in rural Bordeaux, said she hoped to encourage travelers in the Loire Valley to do more than a quick stopover. Traditionally, the instinct has been to race to see as many castles as possible, a scary approach to travel that I’ve been guilty of in the past.
“People will still want to see the castles and we are close – 10 minutes by bike to Cheverny Castle and 45 minutes from Chambord Castle,” said Ms Tourbier. “But those visits can also be extended and combined with gastronomy and wellness.”
Activities abound, from yoga and horseback riding to kayaking and wine-infused spa treatments, but the Tourbiers also planned to turn the property into a culinary destination. Les Sources de Cheverny has two restaurants: L’Auberge, a country bistro serving hearty traditional dishes, and Le Favori, the property’s gourmet restaurant, which won its first Michelin star in March for Chef Frédéric’s contemporary cuisine Calms.
For those seeking a more casual—yet unique—inn experience, the Château de la Haute Borde is a two-year-old small guest house that doubles as an artist’s residence.
As Céline Barrère, a co-founder and photographer, explains, she and the two other owners wanted to create a secluded, creative environment where artists and travelers could interact: four of the nine rooms are reserved for artists in residence, who stay anywhere from a week to a month.
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“We see it as a refuge that brings nature and contemporary art together,” said Ms Barrère.
Visitors can explore the property’s 27 acres, covered in 100-year-old oak trees, soak in the heated pool or participate in foraging workshops, as well as share communal meals with in-residence artists and view works by Hiroshi Harada, Danh Võ and other artists. Conveniently, art lovers can discover more in a five-minute drive along the road at the Domaine de Chaumont-Sur-Loire† known for its garden festival and contemporary art center.
But perhaps the biggest addition to the region is the one that the locals have been waiting for the most. Fleur de Loire, a new five-star hotel by the double-star chef Christophe Hay, will open in mid-June in Blois. The building overlooking the Loire River is housed in a former hospice from the 17th century and is home to two restaurants, a pastry shop, shop, spa and 44 rooms and suites. But for the chef, known for his revival of cooking with local river fish, the real ambition goes beyond culinary experiences and luxurious accommodation to preserve the region’s greatest gift: the land.
“I want people to see how much we can grow here ourselves and how important that is for cooking and eating well,” said Mr Hay, adding that his 2.5-acre vegetable garden uses permaculture techniques, a system of subsistence farming, and sizable greenhouse will be open to the public. “That’s a big part of what makes the Loire Valley so special.”