Candes Saint Martin, One of the Most Beautiful Villages in the Loire Valley

Small but beautiful villages are a special category in France. They have banded together to have their own co-operative marketing and website and are officially designated as les plus beaux villages de France (the most beautiful villages in France). They are all quite tiny as one of the requirements is to have a population of less than 2000 people. All of them are well worth visiting, full of stunning views and thousands of photo opportunities.

Candes Saint Martin sits on the Vienne River, very close to its confluence with the Loire. Its narrow main street runs parallel to the river, with steep side streets coming off it. The buildings are all a mellow limestone and flowers poke up from every crack and crevice. You could not find a more picturesque place. If you would like the opportunity to stroll about in this lovely place, let us know and we will include it in your itinerary. It's not far from Fontevraud Abbey, where Eleanor of Aquitaine is buried, and the mighty chateau-fortress of Chinon, where she was held prisoner by her husband.

The church porch in Candes Saint Martin.

To enquire about our private guided tours of chateaux, wineries, markets and more email us or use our contact form. More tour ideas can be found on the Loire Valley Time Travel website.

Gardens Open at Easter in the Loire Valley

Hurrah! Several lovely gardens in the Loire Valley have got special permission to open at Easter despite the Covid19 restrictions. We only wish that you could be here to see them! We recommend going to Cheverny at this time of year -- the tulips are magnificent. Even with the interior of the chateau out of bounds still, this will be a gorgeous visit.

To enquire about our private guided tours of chateaux, wineries, markets and more email us or use our contact form. More tour ideas can be found on the Loire Valley Time Travel website.

New YouTube Channel Featuring the Loire Valley

We have created a new YouTube channel, to show you a bit of what you might see when you tour with us. At the moment we only have a few older videos loaded, but in time we will be adding more videos showing gardens, chateaux, markets, churches, restaurants, wineries, cheese producers, industrial heritage, nature reserves, troglodyte caves and anything else that interests us and that we think will interest you. If you subscribe to the channel you will be notified by email every time there is a new video.

 

To enquire about our private guided tours of chateaux, wineries, markets and more email us or use our contact form. More tour ideas can be found on the Loire Valley Time Travel website.

Trees for Notre-Dame from the Loire Valley

 Like all over France, owners of forests and sawmills in Indre et Loire (the Touraine Loire Valley) have mobilised, donating more than sixty trees for the reconstruction of the Notre-Dame de Paris roof carpentry. The trees, all between 150 and nearly 300 years old, will primarily come from forests at Amboise and Loches, but also Sainte Maure de Touraine and Orbigny. If you tour with us you will drive through some of these forests and learn how they are managed to provide such important timbers. The project to restore the Cathedral is a huge learning experience, and we would like you to be a part of that aspect of it by passing on our knowledge of heritage conservation practices.

Felling trees for the restoration of Notre Dame. Photo courtesy of Alain Biard

To enquire about our private guided tours of chateaux, wineries, markets and more email us or use our contact form. More tour ideas can be found on the Loire Valley Time Travel website.

French Bread

Bread - the one absolute staple of French cuisine.

The modern steam injected stone based oven in one of the bakeries in our village. The water bottle is for adding water into an external inlet to periodically top up the steam reservoir.

 

Like most things French, bread is not just a simple matter of water, flour, yeast, and common salt - although by law these are the only ingredients allowed in the item labelled "pain". If you want to find out just what makes French bread so special, let us know when you book your tour with us.

One of our local bakers at work.

A typical boule, cut.

Boule.

 

A long loaf made for a food and art festival (L'Art et Lard) in the next village to where I live. Customers buy chunks of the loaf which is priced by weight.

 

 

Traditional breads on display.

This parking sign indicates that parking is not allowed, but stopping for 10 minutes will be tolerated. You only ever see these signs outside bakeries and pharmacies.

 

A glimpse into the back of a bakery near Blois.

Organic sourdough bread at the market in my village in the Loire Valley.

To enquire about our private guided tours of chateaux, wineries, markets and more email us or use our contact form. More tour ideas can be found on the Loire Valley Time Travel website.

Wattle for Women

As Australians we love to see the wattle bloom in February and March in France. But we were shocked to discover how few people here know that wattle is Australian. The locals call it mimosa, and a surprising number think it is native to the south of France. It has been adopted to such an extent that in Europe, from Spain to Russia, there is a well established tradition that wattle is given to women on International Womens Day. We think that is entirely charming and we are proud of how much our neighbours love and enjoy this beautiful Australian plant.

To enquire about our private guided tours of chateaux, wineries, markets and more email us or use our contact form. More tour ideas can be found on the Loire Valley Time Travel website.