French Letter: Our spring break tour de Tours

Tours is one of those centrally-placed French cities — others include Angers, Bourges, even Orléans — that tend to get missed in the gadarene rush to the Riviera. It’s not quite in the North, nor yet in the South. Its roofs are slate, but the walls of its homes and public buildings are built from the French equivalent of Cotswold stone. 

It’s a busy place, close enough to Paris to feel the metropolitan headwinds, far enough away to have developed its own identity down the centuries. If you stand in the Place Jean Jaurès, named after one of the founders of the now moribund French Socialist Party, you could imagine yourself to be somewhere much grander. Fountains splash and play; trams clang their bells; motorcycle police and ambulances fill the air with brass. It is as if something really important is underway, just out of sight, if only you knew what it was.

The Hotel de Ville, with its lofty campanile, is a fabulous fin de-siècle construction, reflecting the full faux glory and all-too-real indulgence of the belle époch. Across the way, on the other side of the Rue National, sits the equally splendid Palais de Justice, the region’s judicial power-house, providing employment for hundreds of lawyers and their staff, whose offices crowd the narrow streets either side of the Boulevard Béranger.  

Tours used to be a major centre of Catholic France, known for its devotion to the cult of the Holy Face of Jesus. But mostly that’s gone now. The present cathedral, dedicated to Saint Gatien, one of the third century Apostles of Gaul, is a typical medieval mishmash, notable for its stained glass and the fact that it can be seen clearly from far off but seems to get lost closer in amid the clutter of its surrounding streets. Today’s church, with its twin spires like salt and pepper shakers, is a monument more than a shrine, though none the worse for that. The current archbishop, Monsignor Vincent Jordy, a native of Perpignan, doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia entry. 

Trees are big in Tours, both literally and figuratively. There are parks everywhere, packed with wonderful specimens. Next to the cathedral and the musée des beaux arts stands the Cedar of Lebanon, allegedly planted by Napoleon in 1804. A true arboreal phenomenon, with a girth of 25 feet, this tree could still be around 800 years from now, unlike most of the nearby bars and cafés. But it is not alone. There are at least 15 other “arbres remarquables” in the city, ring-fenced for their protection and marked on local maps as well as on GPS. 

You have to like a city that likes trees. 

You might think that the Loire, as the longest river in France, would be a central feature of Tours. But it’s not. Most of the time you’d hardly know it was there. The same is true of its main tributary, the Cher, as big as the Thames, which flows into the Loire at Villandry, a little to the west. I like rivers, and both of these are well worth a diversion. But the Loire to Tours is not like the Seine to Paris. It bypasses the town rather than bisecting it. 

In the same way, the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux pulls in not at the historic central station, but at St Pierre des Corps, four kilometres to the east. This is a recurring phenomenon in contemporary France. TGV stations are a bit like Ryanair terminals. They are not always where they say they are. But given that normal trains to Paris Montparnasse only take an hour and ten minutes, who cares? 

Eating out in Tours is all about geography. There are some excellent restaurants in and around Place Jean Jaurès and the cathedral district. But for the real thing, you have to make your way to the Quartier Historic, a district of half-timbered bistrots, brasseries and bars as varied and memorable as anything in France. Some are food factories, with meals delivered “just in time” to customers who flood in from midday to one-fifteen. Young men on bikes, laden with Deliveroo and Uber-Eats boxes, file out from such establishments to all parts of town. But a majority of the restaurants are relaxed and superbly professional. You eat well, you don’t have to fork out a fortune, and the choice is wide. 

Not so at the bar in the Rue de Boisdenier, close to our hotel, which my American wife had identified shortly after our arrival in town as our “hang”. The barman was sorry, but his beer pumps weren’t working and he didn’t have any wine, red or white, to offer. 

“No wine,” I whined. “In France? In the Touraine?” 

A shrug. “Desolé, Monsieur. They said they would deliver this week, but so far, nothing.” 

“Just a demi of Badoit, then, and two glasses.” 

“Badoit?” Intake of breath. “Would a Perrier do?”