Loire Valley in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Loire Valley covers 13 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Loire Valley rewards a detour.

The Loire Valley route at a glance

Day 1

Day 1 covers 7 stops over about 131 km as the crow flies, from Vieux Tours (Tours Old Town) to Château Royal d'Amboise. ≈ 131 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Vieux Tours (Tours Old Town): The old town of Tours, between the Loire and the Cher, with half-timbered houses around Place Plumereau and the Gothic Cathédrale Saint-Gatien nearby, a change of pace from the châteaux. 15 km to the next stop
2. Château de Villandry: Villandry's geometric gardens look purely Renaissance, but they are an early-20th-century re-creation by Joachim Carvallo. You walk one doctor's obsession, laid out in clipped box hedge and vegetable order. 8.2 km to the next stop
3. Château de Langeais: Langeais gives you two castles in one: a ruined tenth-century stone keep in the garden and a fifteenth-century château where Anne of Brittany married Charles the Eighth. 31 km to the next stop
4. Fontevraud Abbey: Fontevraud keeps the painted stone effigies of England's Plantagenet royals, spent a century and a half as a prison, and began as a great monastery led by women. 14 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Château de Chinon: Chinon is a long royal fortress on a ridge above the Vienne, best known for the day in 1429 when Joan of Arc came to meet the future king. 20 km to the next stop
2. Château d'Azay-le-Rideau: Azay-le-Rideau rises straight from the river Indre, an early French Renaissance house built between 1518 and 1527 and left, for political reasons, only half finished in an L-shape. 43 km to the next stop
3. Château Royal d'Amboise: A royal château high on a spur above the Loire, rebuilt by Charles VIII in Gothic and Renaissance styles, where a chapel is said to hold Leonardo da Vinci's contested remains.

Day 2

Day 2 covers 6 stops over about 74 km as the crow flies, from Château du Clos Lucé to Château de Chambord. ≈ 74 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Château du Clos Lucé: The pink-brick manor where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last years and died in 1519, now a museum of rooms, a chapel and reconstructed machines from his drawings. 11 km to the next stop
2. Château de Chenonceau: A Renaissance château that steps across the river Cher on arches, its bridge gallery and twin gardens shaped by women from Diane de Poitiers to Catherine de Medici. 19 km to the next stop
3. Château de Chaumont: Chaumont sits above the Loire with two famous women behind it, Catherine de Médicis and Diane de Poitiers, and a garden festival that reinvents its park every year. 16 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Château Royal de Blois: A royal château in the heart of Blois where four wings ring one courtyard, from medieval fortress to Renaissance staircase, and the Duke of Guise was assassinated in 1588. 13 km to the next stop
2. Château de Cheverny: A symmetrical seventeenth-century château, still owned and run by the same family, which Hergé used as the model for Captain Haddock's Marlinspike Hall in the beloved Tintin books. 14 km to the next stop
3. Château de Chambord: The largest château in the Loire, begun in 1519 for François I as a hunting retreat, famous for its open double-helix staircase and a roofline like a small town.

Distances are straight-line between stops; streets add a little.

Updated: September 28, 2026

Full Loire Valley guide and all stops →