loire river valley

1. Basically, the Loire River is too shallow to be navigable. There are a few segments where craft venture out. You might try Croisières Saumur

2. Several you might contact:

Loire Valley Time Travel
Loire Valley Prestige

1. A rental car is indeed the best option for traveling among the Loire Valley locations. However, gardens will not be at their best in October.

Yes, rent a car to see the chateaux, the main ones you will want to see are not located close to train stations, you need a car.

Let me recommend dropping by Nantes to visit the les Machines de I'iles -- a collection of steam punkish mechanical animals including an enormous wooden mechanical elephant that about 50 people can ride -- you can reserve you ride on line and should. There is also a three level carousel of weird sea creatures -- very Jules Verne (his museum is nearby - he was born in Nantes) and a workshop of newly developed mechanical animals that are displayed and demonstrated. We spent a very fun day there.

We have been in the Loire twice in October and really enjoyed ourselves. The gardens at Chenoceau and Villandry were spectacular. In my opinion, unless you are going to do day tours, you really need a rental car. I did a lot of internet surfing for wineries. It depends on what you are looking for. I especially liked the region of Vouvray, I went thru the Tripadvisor list and then searched on winery names for visit information. We also stopped at various wineries that we saw during our drives. I don't know anything about river cruises. It seemed like the river, at least in the areas we were in, was quite shallow in October and we didn't see a lot of boat traffic.

Regarding the place that Jane recommended in Nantes. A photo of the elephant machine was the BING photo a couple days ago.

Early October is good for the gardens at Villandry - although the summer planting will be over, the cabbages will be in. Towards the end of the month it starts to lose its colour. Chenonceau is less effective at maintaining colour later in the year, but the formal shapes are there. The International Garden Festival at Chaumont sur Loire runs until the 3rd November

Be careful of driving if you're wine tasting, drink driving is the big police campaign around here.

For my money the most interesting churches are the Cathedral in Tours, St Ours in Loches and St Denis in Amboise. There's not much in the way of painted decoration except for some scraps in Azay le Rideau and Lignières-de-Touraine: for that you have to visit the Gartempe valley. Because the Loire Valley was a centre of style and government in the middel ages and renaissance the churches aren't spectacularly old - there's not much around here more than 1000 years old, and they have been constantly "improved" as well.