Ooh la Loire..!

"They will copulate for 12 hours," explained farmer Benjamin, with pride.

"They are very strong," he added, proving the point by lifting the embroiled lovers into the air.

The snails - beefy specimens originally from Algeria - are among the finest in France. And they breed well - albeit, slowly.

And here, deep underground, in caves dug into the side of the Loire valley in Western France, they mate with relish. As the circus of almost stationary, carnal activity before us revealed.

All that is missing is candlelight and a bit of Barry White mood music.

"France eats 50,000 tonnes of snails a year, and most of them come from here," adds Benjamin, with increasing pride.

"Everyone knows about the big Burgundy snails, but they are not so nice and are a bit chewy. Ours are very nice!

The cavern - la Cave aux Moines - also houses a mushroom farm, mushroom restaurant, bar and...wait for it...a swish subterranean nightclub; it's a typically quirky attraction in a slightly surreal land.

The lower Loire valley is a pastoral region of turreted chateaux, historic towns, quaint inns, stately home hotels, crumbling abbeys, villages lost in time, uninhabited river islands, rolling vineyards, wild beavers, and a hearty local cuisine - all washed down with some of the finest wines known to humanity.

But it's also a place of farmhouse savonneries, producing luxurious handmade soaps, racehorse stud farms, avant-garde art, and fabulous Michelin starred restaurants where some of the best chefs in France serve up tastebud-detonating minimalist creations.

And caves. Caves growing fungi and escargots, housing eateries, former troglodyte homes, art galleries and even hotels. But more than anything, caves containing wine cellars - thousands of kilometres of them.

And through it all runs one of Europe's greatest natural treasures - the River Loire, a vast expanse of water, one of Europe's longest, which runs 1,020 km from the Massif Central to the Atlantic, draining, along its way, one fifth of France.

This stretch, through the eponymous Region Pays de la Loire, is its most famous, and beautiful - declared a Unesco World Heritage Site for its natural and man-made charms.

The pace of life here is slow. Traffic jams are unheard of, and rural life moves at the pace of one of its amorous snails.

And there is really only one way of exploring it. By bicycle.

It's a trick not lost on the Pays de la Loire tourist board, who have laid out a network of interconnecting cycle tracks, broadly following the river.

And it's a cyclist's dream. The 446km Loire a velo (Loire on bike) route links tourist attractions with cycle rental points, hotels, inns and guest houses - many of them registered hotels Accueil Velo, which welcome cyclists with covered cycle racks, tools, workshops, high energy breakfasts, breakdown assistance.

And - here's the clincher - they will, for a very small fee, transport your bags to your next night's accommodation.

It's cycling with all the gain and none of the pain, allowing you to amble, at your own speed, through stunning countryside, on well-signposted traffic-free roads, stopping off at fine restaurants or simple cafes, unencumbered by luggage - safe in the knowledge that a fresh set of clothes awaits you in your next hotel, ready for you to slip into for dinner.

All you have to do is get there.

With a whole series of pick-up and drop off points, you can make your French odyssey as long or short as you like.

A logical starting point is the ancient city of Angers.

This gateway to the Loire is just an hour-and-a-half away by Eastern Airways, direct from tiny Southampton Airport - meaning no tortuous journeys around the M25, or exhausting hikes to departure gates. There's just time for a couple of glasses of complimentary Champagne on board, before you touch down in the French countryside.

Angers is a gem of a place - a city of narrow lanes, half-timbered houses, chic boutiques, great restaurants, and, being a university city, a thriving nightlife, bursting with live music venues, chilled bars and banging clubs.

Sitting on a hilltop, above the river, it is crowned with the twin glories of its two-spired cathedral, and vast castle, housing one of the greatest treasures of the medieval world, the 100 metre Apocalypse tapestry - an eye-popping graphical representation of the end of the world, as told in the Book of Revelations.

The longest tapestry in the world (Forget Bayeux), it is as beautiful as it is chilling.

Angers, (which is also incidentally the home of Cointreau), sits astride the River Maine, a tributary of the Loire.

The river and its wooded banks, are a green ribbon, bringing the countryside right into the very heart of the city.

A cycle track runs the alongside the river, from the foot of the castle's 30 metre-high striped walls, to the confluence with the Loire and beyond.

And it provides what must surely be the best entrance, or exit, to any city on the planet.

Scarcely a minute's ride from the castle - a former home of Richard the Lionheart and King John - you are deep in the woods, with only herons, otters and the occasional fisherman for company. And, of course, fellow cyclists (the good folk of the Anjou being passionate devotees of life in the saddle).

From here you have the entire Loire valley before you. The only dilemma being which way to go: upriver to the fairytale town of Saumur with its wine cellars; or down to the timeless riverside town of Montjean-sur-Loire, with its restored sailing boats, from which you can experience 'la vie en Loire' at an even more sedate pace.

Alternatively, you can travel upstream by train or taxi, and follow the river all the way back - quite literally, going with the flow.

We started in the village of Fontevraud-l'Abbaye, with its famous royal abbey, from where it's a gentle ride through undulating farmland to Montsoreau, a white limestone tangle of cottages clustered around a turreted chateau.

It's only 14km from here to the picture postcard town of Saumur, presided over by yet another chateau (there are more than 1,200 of them in these parts!), which towers over the tangled streets from a lofty riverside crag.

But distances can be deceptive. Although it's mercifully free of mountains, the Loire is bounded by steep bluffs, which do require a bit of legwork - and help you burn off the calories of the night before.

Still, for every up, there's a down, and there are few better feelings than freewheeling between ancient vineyards, being greeted by friendly farmers, on roads virtually free of traffic.

While its chateaux and half-timbered buildings are sublime, Saumur has a more unusual claim to fame. Like much of this land, the town sits on limestone, which has been carved out into a labyrinth of subterranean passageways. These are not pokey caves; they are underground chambers and streets, complete with road names, and lined with row upon row of the region's finest treasure - wine.

The Loire is France's premier Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée wine-producing region, turning out 29 million bottles. And 15 million of them come from Saumur.

If you want to discover Saumur properly, you have to arrive on bike, and you have go underground. And the best place to do so, is the Louis De Grenelle winery, which, since 1859, has produced some of the world's finest sparkling wines, and still sells up to four million bottles a year.

"Wine is our passion," says resident expert Sandrine Rozier, cradling a bottle of her finest sparkling rose.

"This is the capital of sparkling wine - and we alone have 2km of caves where we produce and store it.

"We have more streets 'downstairs' than 'upstairs'. You could easily get lost!"

Fortunately, it's easier to navigate above ground. And it has just got easier.

In the first scheme of its kind, Pays de Le Loire has developed its own GPS satellite navigation device for cyclists. It's called Cyclopedia, it sits on your handlebars, and it both tells you where you are on the Loire a Velo route, and points out, with an engaging bicycle bell ring, points of interest along the way.

The scheme already covers 65km of the trail from Gennes to Montjean sur Loire, and can be picked up and dropped off at tourism offices along the route. It will ultimately cover the whole trail.

It's an inspired creation which reveals the hidden history and equally well-concealed present, of this intriguing region - allowing you to take a break from the saddle to explore vineyards, Romanesque churches, and cafes where you can dine on fresh Loire eels, or the local troglodyte speciality fouées - stone-baked flatbreads topped with everything from cave mushrooms to foie gras, and, of course, those ubiquitous subterranean tantric lovers - the snails.

And with new delights around every corner, you could well find yourself matching them for speed - though definitely not for stamina.

Tim travelled to the Loire valley as a guest of Pays de la Loire and Eastern Airways.

Cyclopedia is free for 48 hours, with a deposit of Euro 250.

To reserve one, or for further information on the Loire a Velo route, go to: www.angersloiretourisme.com, www.anjou-tourisme.com, www.paysdelaloire.co.uk or call the tourist offices in Angers +33 241 235 000 or Saumur +33 241 402 060. English is spoken.

Recommended hotels are: The friendly Hotel Le Bussy in Montsoreau (+33 241 38 11 11, email: hotel.lebussy@wanadoo.fr) The art-stuffed Domaine de l'Oie Rouge in Rosiers sur Loire (+33 241 53 65 65, www.domaine-oie-rouge.com) The central Hotel de l'Europe in Angers (+33 241 88 67 45, www.hoteldeleurope-angers.com) The Chateau de l'Epinay, a palatial family home in St Georges-sur-Loire (+33 241 39 87 05; www.chateau-epinay.com) Feast on snails and mushrooms, and dance the night away at Cave aux Moines in Preban (www.cave-aux-moines.com); or dine in serious style while gazing across the river in Angers, at the super-hip, Michelin-starred, Favre d'Anne (+33 241 36 1212).