The Loire

The Loire is the longest river in France. During its 1000-kilometre passage to the Atlantic, it changes character radically from the bleak mountain gorges of the Massif Central to the blooming sun-lit Val de Loire that meanders west from Orléans. On a first enthusiastic visit to this valley in 1847, Gustave Flaubert described it thus: ‘The whole landscape is pretty, varied without monotony, light, graceful, but it is a beauty which caresses without captivating, which charms without seducing and which, in a word, has more good sense than grandeur, and more wit than poetry. C’est la France!’