River of dreams

I'm a lizard by nature, I reluctantly confess - one of those foolish and unfashionable creatures who likes nothing better than to bake in the sun. Preferably the French sun, warming the morning croissants on some lavender-fringed terrace. The trouble is that you have to travel so damned far for the certainty of heat. Well south of the Loire, certainly - the great river that slices across France a third of the way down. The strange thing is that, despite its distinctly Irish climate, this grey-green ribbon of water has a soothing, balmy character that makes it difficult to leave behind.

I'm not sure exactly how many times I've been there, because the hazy memories of one visit flow into another, like the river and its tributaries all sliding together. More than once, I know, we have woven our way along the stretch studded by chateaux - pretty little Azay-le-Rideau, Chenonceaux rising up out of the water, Chambord, which is an unbelievable extravagance of 440 rooms.

Further east in Sologne, a few years ago, I cycled 35 miles a day for a week and still managed to put on half a stone: too much hungry enthusiasm at the dinner table. This summer there was a fleeting chance to explore in the other direction, criss-crossing the westerly region of Anjou-Saumur. The weather, it has to be said, was unkind - the sky a leaking canopy, grey as the slate roofs around Angers - a city known as a centre for umbrella production. But never mind. When the river came in view the clouds seemed to lighten with luminosity.

Besides, there were towns to see, things to do in the brief intervals between endless extended meals. It's as well to remember that you are in the home territory of that calorific pork paste, rillettes; of countless sea and river fish in buttery sauce; of Tarte Tatin and goat's cheeses at every point on the scale from creamy mild to asphyxiatingly pungent.

But you have to earn that. Start by expending some energy in and around the castle in Angers, a massive striped fortress of slate and limestone in a moat now filled with formal gardens. Built around 1240 for the saintly Louis IX, its 17 towers, jutting from a high curtain wall, stand topless, their pepperpot roofs lopped off long ago in the Wars of Religion. But there is still treasure inside, in the 14th-century Tapestry of the Apocalypse - 75 scenes from the Book of Revelation woven in an astonishing 100 metre strip.

Angers is a pleasant place for a wander - big enough to be interesting, small enough not to be overwhelming. Don't miss the Cathedral of St Maurice, with the first Gothic vaulting constructed in Anjou, a doublewidth nave and a spectacular array of stained glass windows.

Saumur, this little region's other main town to the east, is dominated by a much prettier castle - a gleaming white fairytale edifice with the sort of pointy towers you might expect to find marked with Rapunzel graffiti. Rather than descend to the dungeons, climb up to the top for a brilliant panoramic view of town and river. A short distance south-east of here, the Abbey of Fontevraud is an utterly spectacular sight - the well-preserved remains of an early medieval monastic "city" stretching out over 35 acres. Striking an early blow for women's lib, a line of abbesses ran this complex operation, overseeing both monks and nuns. Plenty of space was needed, it would seem, to keep them well away from each other, and at a safe distance from the sick, the lepers and repentant prostitutes who were housed at Fontevraud. You can stay here in the Hotellerie du Prieure StLazare, a former priory subjected to a somewhat clumsy 1970s conversion but comfortable enough and with magnificently handsome public spaces. That way, there's plenty of time to explore the abbey with its tranquil Romanesque church where the pallid effigies of the Plantagenets, Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their son Richard the Lionheart, lie dozing. Even more intriguing is the so-called Roman kitchen, a circular room ingeniously designed with a score of chimneys from open fireplaces all reaching different heights.

Pristine white buildings of tuffeau, the chalky local stone, give the whole area around Saumur a special charm. The name Sau-mur derives from sous mur - for the town itself was apparently hewn out beneath its own walls. The soft stone was easily quarried for chateau construction, and troglodyte dwellings often occupied the spaces left behind. Many are still there, their windows like eyes staring out of the white cliff face. Visit La Grande Vignolle, just outside Turquant, and you'll see how one of the king's favourites fashioned a grand mansion for himself in the 16th century out of a few simple caves.

But the recesses left by quarrying (air vents like chimneys, dotted through the fields, mark the spots) are also put to other uses. From its cavernous depths, the area around Saumur produces two-thirds of France's mushrooms. And in mile upon mile of cool underground cellars, it also has the perfect conditions for making sparkling wine. Saumur Brut and Cremant de Loire are fermented in surroundings reminiscent of Champagne, but cost a good deal less - something to bear in mind when you're ready for an evening drink.

Between Saumur and Angers, small rivers and the great waterway of the Loire meander together through countryside so soporific that you wonder when there could ever have been enough energy in the air to power the windmills. There are vine-clad villages everywhere - for this is serious wine country encompassing, amazingly, 22 appellations. Whatever your drinking instincts, be sure to try delicious white Savennires and the exquisite sweet wines of the Coteaux du Layon, the Coteaux de l'Aubance and Quarts de Chaume.

Cointreau fans can also let rip, paying homage at StBarthelemy d'Anjou to the brothers who hit on a winning formula over a century ago - Adolphe, a sweet shop owner in Angers, and his brother Edouard, a chemist with the knack of distilling exceptionally pure alcohol. All this and more, as you investigate what lies north and south of the river, between two towns that are barely 25 miles apart. A tiny fraction of the mighty Loire! Maybe, for once, old Oscar Wilde wasn't being altogether hyberbolical when he wrote in a letter from these parts: "One of the most wonderful rivers in the world, mirroring from sea to source a hundred cities and five hundred towers."