Loire Life Cycling Holidays is the creation of husband and wife team Alison Shawcroft and Jon Lethbridge.

Originally from the UK, we moved to France in 2006 seeking a new lifestyle!

Alison worked for an international accountancy firm, while Jon was setting up the first Internet banks.  But enough of the past!

Centre-based Loire Valley Cycling Holidays

We spotted a gap in the market for cycling holidays and developed our centre-based cycling holiday concept – Loire Life Cycling.

Most cycling holidays in France involve travelling from hotel to hotel. Remote companies arrange the cycling using local representatives.

Our approach was to provide everything in one location and a holiday hosted by experts that really knew and loved the area!

In Le Gué de Ray we created a beautiful cycling base where guests can make themselves at home, enjoy fabulous cuisine and enjoy carefully planned bespoke cycling routes to explore the Loire Valley. In 2026 we added La Touche as our second cycling base!

Ali & Jon personally host you throughout your stay and so offer a professional service with a personal touch and unrivalled local knowledge.

Our first Loire Valley Discovery Tour was run for 2 guests way back in 2008, with our first two hire bikes, our first set of routes and a lot of enthusiasm!

Loire Life Cycling Grows

Roll on eighteen years and we’ve welcomed hundreds of guests from around the world. Our main markets are Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, South Africa and the UK.

We create a true cycling home from home for our guests – by day two they are happy helping themselves to drinks, laundering their cycling gear and chatting with other guests as if they’ve known them for years – it’s what we love about running our holidays.

We have a fleet of 30 hire bikes including road bikes and e bikes and in addition to the Loire Valley Discovery Cycling Tour we offer shorter cycling breaks and run cycling holidays for groups.

Keeping it fun and personal

Keeping the holidays fun and maintaining our enthusiasm on which it’s all built is vitally important to us.

We care about providing a memorable cycling holiday in France.  With some guests on their third or fourth trips to us, we think that’s exactly what we do!