You'll find no better company on earth than 40 northerners on a coach holiday

Telegraph

7 days ago

This is how things unfolded that sweltering Saturday afternoon on the River Loire. Our coach group of around 40 had been divided between three flat-bottomed toues, the traditional wooden Loire working boats. We were drifting, our bronzed boatmen letting the current do the work as they explained this and that about France's longest, wildest river.
Beavers featured prominently. One boatman thought he'd spotted a few on the bank. He guided his boat in, leapt for land and started digging around with a short stick, seeking beavers. Intent, he didn't notice his boat escape, drifting away towards the middle of the river. Then he did. Panic attack. He plunged after it. There were a dozen or so rudderless senior Britons floating off, conceivably quite far.
The plunging, though, merely pushed the boat further away. The boatman was neck deep before he caught up, and couldn't haul himself aboard. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Tony, a retired local government worker from Ingleton, managed to haul a saturated Frenchman to safety. It was a stirring display. Manly handshakes were exchanged, the entente cordiale sealed once again.
Such drama is not the usual diet of coach trips but, believe me, these tours are absolutely not as perceived by those who have never taken one. I know. I've been there. Once a year, I stop being a reporter to organise, and guide, a French holiday for a Yorkshire Dales coach company owned by a friend of mine. I have a ball.
This year, 2025, in the hottest early summer since the Big Bang, we rolled into the Loire Valley, rolled into a hotel in Amboise and rolled out every day around what is the 'Frenchiest' region of France. Here the language is the purest, the light the softest, the landscape the most amply fertile and the history the most elegant. The world's greatest collection of Renaissance châteaux constitutes the stateliest statement of French aspirations. And the Loire itself provides the running commentary.
But – as I said over the coach PA, maybe a little too often – Chambord castle and the rest aren't just majestic monuments. They were the setting for heavyweight history: power plays, torture, intrigue, debauchery, murder, skulduggery, cross-dressing, adultery and epic horticulture – all more or less vital to keep France governed and French monarchs on top. That's the fascination.
Here we had, then, the best of France being visited by the best of Britain. Granted, our cast of northern English people were not in the first bloom of youth, more of an age when independent travel had become too much of a palaver. With a coach tour, you take your bags to the hold, ensure you're punctual and polite – which comes naturally to Britons of this ilk – and that's your responsibilities done.
And, once met, they proved a diverse bunch. Where else might one share conversation, drinks and meals with a surgeon, several farmers, businessmen and women, teachers, the boss of an electrical company, a champion crown green bowler, a graphic artist and civil servants, among many others – who, incidentally, had more to tell me than I ever had to tell them?
As built-in company goes, there's none better. I'd look round the bar at apéritif time, see couples travelling independently who surely didn't consider themselves 'coach group people'. They were as glum as hell. Meanwhile, batches of our bunch were discussing the day, Starmer, French food, Joan of Arc, rugby league, kids, grandkids, the NHS and former holidays in France over beer, wine, gin and tonic, and Baileys with ice. I don't ask for much more.
So we roamed the great château of Chambord where, with vast magnificence, Renaissance king François I established that French kings were second only to God, and a pretty close second, at that. The Black Eyed Peas had played a summer show in the grounds a few days earlier. The Loire châteaux are going all out to kick on into the 21st century. That said, the grandeur still expresses the absolute power of the 16th and 17th.
We took in Chenonceau – arching over the river, a couple of unicorns short of fairy-tale perfection – and Clos Lucé in Amboise, where Leonardo de Vinci spent his final years. The manor house and grounds now host evocations of the works – engineering, art, architecture – of a man better than everyone at everything. As Leonardo's host, François I, said: 'It is inconceivable that life might produce anyone similar.' He'd foreseen, among much else, the parachute, helicopter, machine gun, military tank and car-jack. 'I'd no idea,' said a cultivated lady from Lancashire. 'I thought he was just the Mona Lisa.'
And that was enough châteaux. Loire valley visitors need to know that 'châteaux fatigue' is a real threat. Divert to the gardens. Villandry is among the most extreme in France, the French correcting God's design for nature with fanatical geometrical precision. It's a dazzling exercise in horticultural control – but also a challenge to get round as the temperatures rose to around 35C.
Most seductive of all the gardens were those at Plessis-Sasnières in the Loir (no 'e') valley, slightly to the north of the grander Loire. Echoing English gardens – their creator was a fan – these caressed the senses with colour, calm and aromas. A waterhen and her chicks scooted across water lilies. And there was tranquillity, too, around beer, tea and assorted drinks on the shady tea-room terrace.
We'd travelled along the Loir from Thoré-la-Rochette on a 1950s train retained for tourists and run by volunteers of some exuberance. We'd lunched at Montoire, directly opposite the little station where, on October 24, 1940, Hitler and Pétain shook hands on their collaboration deal. The station is now a little museum but not open very often, which may be just as well. As one of the (above) volunteers said: 'It's the only reason anyone's ever heard of the place, but Montoire locals would prefer they hadn't'.
A surprising amount of life in both the Loire and Loir valleys takes place underground, in caves and troglo-dwellings either featuring in, or dug out of, the limestone rock. Near Montoire, we'd scheduled a visit to Trôo – a vertical village punched into a cliff face on several levels. We soon abandoned that. The perpendicular ascent, or descent, and rickety steps would have seen off half the group.
That said, we got a decent taste of troglodyte matters, first at Bourré where some of the miles of former underground workings were now devoted to growing exotic mushrooms. A fine guide made the subject roughly 37 times more interesting than anticipated. Meanwhile, round a few underground corners, a stone-mason and a sculptor had created a haut-relief model main street about a third life-size – and teeming with reminders, for future generations, of what mid-20th-century village life resembled.
Later, lunch in a nicely-lit troglo-restaurant went pretty well, too, not least due to a local starter of warm fouées. As you'll probably know, these are something very like pitta bread, cut almost in two and filled with potted meat (rillettes) and salad. A Touraine red proved just the ticket.
On other days, we toured Amboise by dinky tourist train – do not disdain them – and Blois by Percheron heavy horse and carriage. Getting aboard necessitated gymnastics from people who hadn't done much of this kind of thing in decades. A sense of triumph filled the air, and the gigantic horses clip-clopped off.
So to boat, heroics – and home to the hotel. As I've learnt, an important part of any tour organiser's job is to ensure that the group is back at the hotel to change (smart shirts, posh frocks) for the correct amount of drinks before dinner. Not many. Mainly just one, but a vital one. It is also to know when to shut up.
Join our writer in France next summer
Anthony Peregrine's 2026 summer tour will be to the Moselle in northeast France, based in Metz. Details remain to be finalised but will be found at bibbys.co.uk.