Best hotels in Loire Valley

Gaston d'Orléans ordered this hospice built on the Loire's left bank, facing the royal château he was busy remodelling across the water. Christophe Hay, born up the road in Vendôme and trained at the hotel school in Blois itself, sold the restaurant that made his name in order to take the place on. It opened after a long restoration and his kitchen now holds two stars and a green one. Grounds run down towards the river: greenhouses, a permaculture potager, fifty-odd heirloom asparagus varieties. He keeps his own wagyu herd, too. Dinner is very much the draw, and everybody here knows it.

White turrets, steep slate roofs and a terrace looking down a green valley: this is a country-house hotel, comfortable rather than grand, and all the better for knowing it. Lawns fall away under cedars of Lebanon to the Indre, one of the Loire's gentler tributaries, and you can row on it. Dinner comes under the glass roof of the old orangery, with pigeon from Racan up the road and truffle when the season allows. Fires get lit in both salons, a billiard table waits by the bar, and nobody hurries you in the morning. Tours is fifteen minutes off, and the rest of the Loire Valley an easy drive.

Creeper climbs the brick and stone here, so the whole front goes scarlet in October, and the oak woods behind are full of paths, two ponds you have to look for and dead-straight rides once cut for hunting. The Loire is a short drive south and invisible from every window, which makes the name aspirational. Inside runs to ebony bookcases, blue-grey walls and toile de Jouy, with candles and lit fires once it gets dark. The kitchen once held two Michelin stars and now holds none, and a chef in his late twenties is trying to win them back. Children are properly welcome, which is rarer than it ought to be.