19th-Century Touraine Farmhouse in Bléré | 3-Bed Holiday Home in Loire Valley, France



Centre, Indre-et-Loire, Bléré, France, Bléré (France)
3 Bedrooms · 1 Bathrooms · 149m² Floor area
€302,000
House
No parking
3 Bedrooms
1 Bathrooms
149m²
Garden
No pool
Not furnished
Description
On a Sunday morning in late spring, you open the French doors off the ground-floor bedroom and the smell of cut grass and warm stone drifts in from the south-facing terrace. Somewhere down the lane, a rooster is doing his thing. The kitchen is already flooding with light—it faces south too—and you're standing there with a coffee, looking out at the enclosed garden, thinking this might be the most at ease you've felt in years. That's the rhythm this place puts you in.
This authentic 19th-century Touraine farmhouse sits just outside the village of La Croix en Touraine in the commune of Bléré, right in the heart of the Indre-et-Loire department. It's the kind of address that means nothing until you visit and then means everything. The Loire Valley isn't a backdrop here—it's your actual life on weekends and summers.
The house itself is honest and well-kept. Roughly 149 square metres spread across the main building, with a layout that's been thoughtfully configured for real living rather than a developer's floor-plan fantasy. Step through the entrance hall and you're immediately in the thick of it: a large fitted kitchen that flows straight out to the terrace, a cathedral-ceilinged living and dining room of around 40 square metres with original exposed beams, stone walls, parquet floors, and a wood-burning stove that pulls its weight every autumn weekend. The proportions feel generous without being cavernous. In winter, that stove throws enough heat to make the whole ground floor feel like you pulled the house around you like a blanket.
The ground floor also includes a bedroom with its own French doors—convenient for guests or for those mornings when you want to slip outside before anyone else is awake—plus an office, a bathroom fitted with both a bathtub and a walk-in shower, a WC, and a compact utility room. Head upstairs and you find two more bedrooms and a second WC on the attic floor, along with a mezzanine that hovers above the living room adding roughly 20 square metres of flexible space. Use it as a reading gallery, a kids' play area, a proper home office with a view into that high-ceilinged room below—it's the kind of bonus that doesn't show up clearly on a floor plan but makes a real difference day to day.
Beneath the house, an authentic vaulted cellar. In the Loire Valley, this isn't a novelty—it's a necessity. Wine storage, obviously, but also the particular pleasure of descending stone steps into cool air in July while the terrace bakes in the afternoon sun.
Outside, a carport fits two cars, there's a garden shed for tools and bikes, and a 20-square-metre workshop built in 2022 that's clean, useful, and still smells faintly new. The enclosed plot runs to 398 square metres—manageable enough that a weekend visit doesn't turn into a grounds-maintenance expedition, but generous enough for a proper outdoor table, a stretch of lawn, and some container planting if that's your thing. The south-facing orientation means this terrace gets sun from mid-morning well into the evening. In June, you'll be eating outside every night.
The house runs on a heat pump system that handles both heating and air conditioning—the upstairs bedrooms stay cool through August, which matters in Touraine, where summer temperatures regularly push into the mid-thirties.
Now, the location. Bléré sits on the Cher river, about 20 kilometres east of Tours and roughly 10 kilometres from Amboise, the market town that non-French visitors tend to discover and immediately obsess over. The Château d'Amboise sits above the town like something out of a history book—because it is—and Leonardo da Vinci spent the last three years of his life at the nearby Clos Lucé manor, which is now one of the more quietly remarkable museums in the whole country. You can walk through reconstructions of his machines and have the whole place to yourself on a Tuesday morning in October.
Bléré itself has a Saturday morning market on the Place de la République that locals actually use rather than perform for tourists. Butchers, cheese vendors, a rôtisserie chicken stall that will make you rethink your entire approach to poultry. The town has a boulangerie, a couple of restaurants, a pharmacy, and that particular unhurried quality that makes you slow down within an hour of arriving. There's also a heated outdoor swimming pool open in summer—the kind of municipal facility the French do rather well.
For cycling, the Loire à Vélo route passes through the area, and the dedicated paths connecting Bléré to Amboise and onward toward Blois and Chenonceau are genuinely excellent. The Château de Chenonceau—the one that spans the Cher on its arches—is about 8 kilometres from your front door. You'll go on a grey Tuesday in November when the crowds have gone and feel like you have the whole Renaissance to yourself.
Wine is not incidental here. The Touraine appellation produces Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, and Cabernet Franc under a dozen different sub-labels, and the vignerons around Bléré and Montlouis-sur-Loire are often happy to receive visitors who show up curious and unpretentious. This is the Loire, not Burgundy—there's less ceremony and more actual conversation.
Tours-Val de Loire Airport handles connections from London, Dublin, and several European cities, particularly in summer. By car from Paris via the A10, you're looking at about two hours to Bléré. The TGV from Paris Montparnasse reaches Tours in under an hour, and Bléré is a 20-minute drive from the station. For a second home, the access equation is straightforward and forgiving.
For international buyers, France offers a clear legal framework for non-resident property ownership. The notarial system provides strong buyer protections, and the purchase process—while methodical—is well-trodden territory for anyone buying through an established platform. The property is priced at 302,000 euros with agency fees included. Given what this stretch of the Loire Valley has been doing to property values over the past several years, this is a well-positioned entry point into one of France's most consistently sought-after second home markets. Short-term rental demand in the area is real and growing, driven by the cycling tourism infrastructure and the region's UNESCO World Heritage status—the entire Loire Valley between Chalonnes and Sully-sur-Loire has held that designation since 2000.
Key features at a glance:
- Authentic 19th-century Touraine farmhouse in excellent condition
- 149 sq m of living space across main house plus outbuildings
- 3 bedrooms plus a mezzanine of approximately 20 sq m
- Cathedral-ceiling living room with wood-burning stove and parquet floors
- South-facing terrace opening directly from kitchen and ground-floor bedroom
- Original stone walls and exposed beams preserved throughout
- Heat pump system providing heating and air conditioning
- Vaulted stone cellar beneath the house
- 2022-built workshop (20 sq m) plus garden shed and two-car carport
- Enclosed 398 sq m plot in a quiet setting near La Croix en Touraine
- 8 km from Château de Chenonceau, 10 km from Amboise
- 20 km from Tours, with TGV access to Paris in under 1 hour
- On the Loire à Vélo cycling route network
- Strong short-term rental potential in UNESCO-listed Loire Valley corridor
- Move-in ready second home or vacation rental investment
If you've been looking for a vacation home in the Loire Valley that has actual character without demanding a full restoration project, this farmhouse in Bléré is worth serious attention. Reach out through Homestra to arrange a viewing—properties at this price point in this condition, in this location, don't wait around.
Details
- Amount of bedrooms
- 3
- Size
- 149m²
- Price per m²
- €2,027
- Garden size
- 398m²
- Has Garden
- Yes
- Has Parking
- No
- Has Basement
- Yes
- Condition
- good
- Amount of Bathrooms
- 1
- Has swimming pool
- No
- Property type
- House
- Energy label
Unknown
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