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and Europe. She is the editor of eight Travelers’ Tales books, including five books in the Best Women’s Travel Writing series. This essay,
Beneath the Surface
, was the Gold Solas Award winner in the travel and transformation category for 2012. She lives in Dallas with her husband and daughter.

SUSAN ORLEAN

    Storming the Castles
    Was it the wine, the wheat, or the wind in her hair?
    I n the Loire Valley you come for the castles but you stay for the wheat. The castles are the headline event, of course—300 spectacular jewel boxes and ornate medieval confections scattered throughout the region, overlooking the meandering river. But the wheat is the richer, subtler surprise, only revealed to the more painstaking traveler. There are miles and miles of it, spread like a gigantic shag carpet—winter wheat, bleached and crisp, and early spring wheat, so fresh it is almost lime-colored, and the summer wheat, golden and bent with the weight of berries.
    I first noticed it when we were just a few miles into our bike trip, on a quiet country road where our tires clicked along on the gravel. There were so many wide acres that the wheat looked almost like water rippling in the wind—a tan and gold and green grassy ocean. In a car, which is the way I usually travel, fields are just fields, an undifferentiated blurred space you whip past as you head to the main attractions. But I immediately noticed that on a bicycle, the scale is entirely different. The wheat is almost as high as your head, and it seems to keep you company, whistling and whispering and waving as you ride along.
    I had never been to the Loire before, but a year earlier I’d traveled throughout the nearby Meuse Valley. I’d gone there to do some research for my book on the dog actor Rin Tin Tin, who was born there. I love being on the road, but on that trip I noticed for the first time how poorly the pace of driving suits my style. Most of both valleys are farmland, and at sixty miles an hour, that kind of landscape loses its features and you miss out on its secrets. It was only when I stopped my car that I would find something tucked away, tacked on a barn door, its narrative told in a quieter way.
    I love France, and that trip to the Meuse Valley planted in me a yearning to experience it at a different pace, one that would allow me to notice it more intimately, see it more closely, but still travel a good distance. Then someone mentioned to me that the Loire Valley is an idyllic place for beginner bike trips. I consulted Google: it turns out there is a 400-plus-mile network of paths and somnolent back roads called the Loire a Velo, a route that has become a magnet for small, quirky, cycling-friendly inns. The distances between these lodgings—as few as fifteen or so miles, though you can do far more—didn’t seem hugely intimidating.
    Still, it was one thing to fantasize about such a trip and another to actually pull it off. Given the demands of my work schedule, I really wanted to travel with my husband, John, and son, Austin, who’s six. But a first grader on a bike trip? In an unfamiliar place where we don’t speak the language (or rather, where I think I speak the language but no one seems to share that opinion)? How would that work? Also, could I handle it? I’d been on a bike seat just long enough to know that if I stayed on it much longer, I could get saddle sores.
    One thing seemed clear: this would either be the greatest idea ever—or we would be in over our heads from the first turn of the pedals.
    For a while, it seemed the trip might dematerialize before we could even start. In the weeks before we left, I became obsessed with chafing. I think, honestly, I was transferring all my cycling-related anxieties into one identifiable problem. The fact was, the farthest I’d ever ridden was a ten-mile loop to the post office. I wasn’t in bad shape, but I felt unprepared for a bike trip. In my defense, I