The weekend
Four days in Saumur, the white tuffeau-stone town on the Loire — and the easiest riding on the list. This is the only destination here built around a genuinely purpose-built cycle path: La Loire à Vélo runs right through town, flat, surfaced, waymarked and almost entirely traffic-free. You cannot get lost, and you will barely meet a car.
The cellars here are theatrical. Saumur's sparkling houses are cut into the limestone cliff along the river — kilometres of galleries hollowed out over centuries, lit, cool, and set up for visitors with scheduled daily tours. They are commercial operations, so they will be open and staffed in late October whatever the harvest has done. That was the whole problem with the festival weekends, and Saumur solves it.
A little history
Saumur has been quarried as much as it has been built: the white tuffeau limestone that makes the château and the town so luminous was cut from beneath it, leaving hundreds of kilometres of galleries now used for wine, mushrooms and the odd underground restaurant. The château appears in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, painted around 1412. The town has been France's cavalry school since 1763, and in June 1940 its cadets held the Loire bridges against a far larger German force for three days — an act still commemorated locally.
What it costs
Per person for the whole weekend, priced for a party of four — two twin rooms, or one whole place between you. Everything but the bed is fixed, so where you sleep is the only row that moves and the only one shown as a range.
| Per person | |
|---|---|
| Getting there, both ways | £142 |
| Three nights | £35–135 |
| Bikes and getting about | £28 |
| Eating, drinking and tastings | £160 |
| The weekend, per person | ~£360–460 |
Where to sleep
| Option | Per person |
|---|---|
| Hotels — two twin rooms | |
| Budget hotels by the river and the station | €25 a night £65 for three |
| Three-star hotels in the old town | €52 a night £135 for three |
| Airbnb and self-catering — one whole place | |
| Entry-level flats in Saumur | €14 a night £35 for three |
| The typical Saumur listing | €19 a night £50 for three |
The cheapest self-catering market on the site.
Eating and drinking
| What | Each |
|---|---|
| A menu du jour | €15–25 |
| Dinner with a bottle of Saumur-Champigny | €35–55 |
| Tastings in the troglodyte cellars | free, mostly |
The £160 above assumes the middle of this list: a cheap lunch, an ordinary dinner, one good one over the weekend, and wine throughout. It does not change with the room.
Day by day
Friday Arrive & the cliff cellars
- Morning easyJet to Nantes; TER along the Loire into Saumur by mid-afternoon. Check in, collect bikes.
- Late afternoon: Bouvet-Ladubay, a short pedal downstream in Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent — 8km of galleries under the cliff, and they run tours on their own vintage bicycles, made in-house.
- Evening: dinner in the old town below the château. Fouées — hollow bread puffs baked in tuffeau ovens and split at table to be stuffed with rillettes and goat cheese.
Saturday Train to Angers, then the Loire à Vélo home
- 54.4km with 305m of ascent, and it runs the right way round: the train does the outbound leg, so there is no train to catch at the end of the day and no clock on lunch.
- Early TER to Angers-Saint-Laud with the bikes, then straight out of the city past Les Ponts-de-Cé at 6km, where the Loire splits into three arms.
- The long middle section is the river itself — Blaison-Gohier at 21km, Saint-Rémy-la-Varenne and its Benedictine priory at 26km — on levee-top paths with sandbanks, islands and almost no traffic.
- Gennes at 36km is lunch: riverside guinguettes, and a Roman amphitheatre up the hill behind if anyone wants to earn the meal.
- Cunault at 42km is the one unmissable stop — a Romanesque priory church absurdly large for the village it stands in, with 223 carved capitals. Then Chênehutte, and troglodyte houses cut straight into the tuffeau.
- Bouvet-Ladubay at 51km, three flat kilometres short of home: 8km of galleries under the cliff, toured on their own vintage bicycles, made in-house. Ending the day here rather than starting it is the whole argument for riding this direction.
- Into Saumur at 54km, under the château. Dinner at Le Gambetta if you booked it.
54.4 km · 306 m of ascent · 17–78 m
Sunday The river road out, Fontevraud at the top, the tastings on the way home
- 55.7km with 276m of ascent, ridden anticlockwise so that the drinking happens near the end. From the last glass it is 15km home, almost all of it downhill — against 34km and a 100-metre climb if you go the other way round.
- Out along the water first. Eighteen flat kilometres east on the river road to Candes-Saint-Martin, where the Vienne runs into the Loire — one of the plus beaux villages, and blessedly empty at nine in the morning.
- Up onto the plateau to Fontevraud at 26km, the only real climb of the day and the high point at 101m. The largest surviving monastic city in Europe, and where Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II and Richard the Lionheart lie under painted effigies. Lunch here, almost exactly halfway.
- Back down to Montsoreau at 31km — the only Loire château built with its feet actually in the river — and then west along the troglodyte road cut into the cliff above the water.
- La Grande Vignolle at 34km: Filliatreau's troglodyte site in the rock face, and the first tasting of the day.
- Château du Hureau at 40km and Domaine Filliatreau at 40.5km, half a kilometre apart at Dampierre and Chaintres — a Renaissance manor with cellars cut into the tuffeau beneath it, and the estate that made Saumur-Champigny's modern reputation. Book both; take your time, because nothing after this is hard.
- Down through Varrains and Chacé and out of the vines, with the Grand Dolmen de Bagneux at 52km — the largest dolmen in Europe, twenty metres of it, raised around 3,000 BC and standing in a café garden — as the last stop before Saumur.
55.7 km · 276 m of ascent · 25–102 m
Monday Home
- Slow morning: the château on its bluff, the Cadre Noir riding school, the covered market.
- Early afternoon TER back to Nantes; evening flight to Gatwick.
When to go
Spring — March to May
8–18°C. The Loire is high and fast, the tuffeau cliffs are bright, and the riverside path is empty. Showery, but the light on the white stone is lovely.
Summer — June to August
15–26°C, warm and reliably dry — the Loire is a gentle summer climate, and the river beaches come into use. The Grandes Tablées in August is the event of the year.
Autumn — September and October
10–19°C, harvest in September, mushroom caves at their best, and the cliff cellars a steady 12°C whatever is happening outside.
When to go
Early September, or the first week of August if you want the Grandes Tablées. The cellars are open year-round, which makes this the most season-proof destination here.
Festivals
None of this weekend assumes a festival. The rides work on any weekend of the season. If your dates land on the Grandes Tablées du Saumur-Champigny in the first week of August, the streets of Saumur are the event and the base is in the middle of it: ride in the day, eat in the street at night. The trade is worth stating plainly: on a festival weekend the growers are behind a stand in the square rather than showing visitors round a cellar, so book private tastings weeks ahead or accept that some will be shut, and expect beds to be scarcer, dearer and gone months in advance.
Spring
Cadre Noir gala performances — spring
The French national riding school, based here, shows its work in the spring and autumn seasons.
Summer
Les Grandes Tablées du Saumur-Champigny — first week of August
Ten thousand people eating at long tables in the streets of Saumur, with the growers pouring their own wine. The best party on this whole list.
Autumn
Festivini — September
A wine and film festival across the town and the cellars, timed to the harvest.
Ban des Vendanges — September
The formal proclamation of the harvest, with the confrérie in full robes.
Getting there
From London, per person, assuming bikes are hired locally rather than flown. Fares checked September 2026 and converted at €1 to 86p.
| Leg | Time | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| The flight | ||
| easyJet, Gatwick to Nantes (NTE), daily, from £35–55 | 1h 20 | £45 |
| Airport into Nantes | ||
| Tram or shuttle to Nantes station (€10) | 0h 30 | £9 |
| Nantes to Saumur | ||
| TER up the Loire (€20). Bikes travel free on TER, which matters here | 1h 15 | £17 |
| Waiting and one change | 0h 50 | — |
| Door to door, one way | 3h 55 | £71 |
| Both ways | £142 | |
Flying to Paris and taking the TGV to Angers, then twenty minutes on, is smoother if the flight times suit.
Bike hire
Assumes hybrids.
| Shop | Rate |
|---|---|
| Détours de Loire, Saumur — four points along the Loire, so you can collect in one town and leave the bikes in another | rates on request |
| Saumur Bike Hire — delivered to where you are staying, every day from 8am to 10pm | from €13 a day |
| Cycl’O de Loire — hire and guided rides | rates on request |
The one-way hire is worth knowing about: it turns a there-and-back day into a point-to-point one.
Getting about
| What | Cost |
|---|---|
| Bike hire, Saturday and Sunday | £22 |
| Buses and the Loire ferries, allow | £6 |
| Getting about, whole weekend | £28 |
Bikes ride free on TER, so the train legs cost nothing extra.
The wineries
Bouvet-Ladubay
8km of galleries cut into the cliff, a contemporary art foundation in the cellars, and guided tours by bicycle. Scheduled daily tours, book online.
Domaine Filliatreau
The estate that made Saumur-Champigny's modern reputation; cellars in the rock and reds that repay a cool glass. Book ahead.
Château du Hureau
Cabernet Franc and dry Chenin from a Renaissance manor with troglodyte cellars beneath. Receives visitors reliably.
Langlois-Château
Crémant de Loire specialist owned by Bollinger; polished, scheduled tours if the group wants a second sparkling house.
The wines
Chenin Blanc in every register — bone-dry Saumur Blanc, off-dry Coteaux de Saumur, and the great sweet wines of Bonnezeaux and Quarts de Chaume further downstream. Cabernet Franc makes Saumur-Champigny: light, cool, graphite-and-raspberry reds meant to be drunk young and slightly chilled. And Crémant de Loire, made by the traditional method in those cliff cellars.
Eat & drink
| Friday | Fouées and rillettes in the old town |
| Saturday | Riverside lunch at Gennes; dinner Le Gambetta (book) |
| Sunday | Vineyard lunch in Chacé; Loire pike and Chenin in town |
| Monday | Market breakfast, then the train |
The food
Fouées, rillettes de Tours, goat cheeses (Sainte-Maure, Selles-sur-Cher), Loire pike and sandre with beurre blanc, and button mushrooms — grown commercially in the very same caves, which supply a large share of France's crop.
Where to stay
Château de Verrières
A short walk from the centre, with a garden that runs down towards the château. The most characterful bed in town.
Hôtel Anne d'Anjou
18th-century townhouse with a listed staircase; ask for a Loire-facing room.
Le Bussy
Simple, well-priced, and the view back across the Loire to the floodlit château at night is the best in Saumur.
Practical
- France allows cyclists 0.5 g/l of blood alcohol, the same limit as drivers — so one glass with lunch is the practical ceiling if you are riding afterwards. See the country-by-country table.
- Saturday depends on one train, and it is the first one. Saumur to Angers-Saint-Laud is 30 minutes on the TER with bikes carried free. Going out by train and riding home means nothing later in the day is timed — no connection to make, no reason to cut lunch at Gennes short.
- La Ménitré is the escape hatch. The railway runs along the north bank, so if the weather turns you cross at Gennes and pick up a train roughly 20km from home rather than grinding it out.
- Ride the Sunday anticlockwise. It is the same 56km either way, but the direction decides where the tastings fall. Anticlockwise puts them at 34–40km with 15km and 41m of climbing left afterwards; clockwise puts them at 15km with 34km and 159m still to come, including the pull up to Fontevraud. Same route, quite different afternoon.
- It is not flat, whatever the Loire suggests. 276m of ascent — the climb onto the Fontevraud plateau at 26km is the only sustained one, and it comes before lunch on fresh legs.
- Why this one is so easy to recommend: a flat dedicated cycle path, cellars that are commercial visitor operations open all week, rooms available outside high summer, and some of the cheapest eating on the list.
- Bike hire: several outfits in Saumur and at the campsite on the île d'Offard; Détours de Loire has a Saumur branch and allows one-way hire along the valley. Book Friday–Sunday.
- Bikes on trains: free on TER services; reserve a space where the booking system offers it.
- Check sunset before you plan the last leg. Any day that finishes with a ride home wants an hour of light in hand, and that hour disappears fast either side of the equinoxes.
- The wines are lighter than Barolo or Rioja. If the group wants big reds, Saint-Émilion or Haro will suit better.
- La Loire à Vélo — official route site — the waymarked route, stage by stage, with bike-friendly hosts
- Saumur Loire Valley Tourism — official tourist office — cellars, events agenda, bike hire
- Interloire — Loire Valley wines — the official wine board for the Loire appellations
- France Vélo Tourisme — Saumur to Angers — the 60km Saturday section