Devon or Loire Valley?

Only Devon is a beach destination. The north coast has long Atlantic sands with dunes and surf, and the south has calmer estuary beaches, shingle coves and the red-cliffed resort beaches of Torbay. The water is cold, but rock pools and sandcastles make up a real seaside summer.

The Loire Valley is inland, and its river is too dangerous to swim in. Swimming there means a supervised lake, such as the Lac de Maine at Angers, or more often the pool at your rental house. The nearest Atlantic beaches lie west of Nantes, a long drive from the château country.

Devon's food is honest produce: Brixham fish, Salcombe crab, clotted cream teas and farmhouse cider. The best of it is in Dartmouth and the harbour towns, but fine dining is scattered and the resort seafronts mostly serve chips.

The Loire eats and drinks better. It is a great wine region, from Sancerre to Chinon to sparkling Saumur, with tasting cellars cut into the tufa. Rillettes, goat cheeses and beurre blanc match the wine, and the covered markets of Tours and Saumur are a pleasure to browse.

The Loire is in another league here. Its UNESCO-listed valley holds the world's densest run of Renaissance châteaux, and medieval Fontevraud and the fortress of Angers add an older layer. A week there barely covers the headline sights.

Devon's best is Exeter Cathedral, with its long Gothic vault, along with Plymouth's Elizabethan Barbican and a spread of National Trust houses such as Castle Drogo and Greenway. These are rewarding stops on a seaside stay rather than the reason to make the trip.

Neither is a place for a big night out, and evenings in both end early outside the university cities. The difference is in the setting. In Devon, a night out means a harbourside pint in Dartmouth or a fire-lit Dartmoor inn, with Plymouth's Barbican for something louder. In the Loire, it means a long dinner with wine, or the student café terraces of Place Plumereau in Tours on a warm night.

Devon has much the stronger outdoors. Dartmoor's granite tors and pony-grazed moor let you walk all day without seeing a road, and Exmoor's cliffs drop sharply into the sea. The coast path runs along both shores, and Croyde's surf and the sailing estuaries add water sports.

The Loire is soft lowland country of willows, sandbanks, vineyards and troglodyte cliffs. It is lovely by bike or canoe, and the Sologne forests are good for spotting deer. There is nothing there to test a hiker, though.

The Loire is made for outings. From Tours, Amboise, Blois, Chinon, Loches, Saumur and the wine villages of Vouvray and Bourgueil are all a short drive or train ride away. For bigger days, Paris is about an hour by fast train, and Chartres, Bourges or Poitiers are full days out at around two hours each way. The only real risk is seeing too many châteaux.

Devon has good outings too: a boat down the Dart from Totnes to Dartmouth, cobbled Clovelly, a sail to Lundy, or Bath and the Cornish gardens beyond the county edge. These depend more on where you stay, though, and summer traffic slows them down.

Both work well with children, but in different ways. Devon offers the classic British seaside: lifeguarded sand, rock pools, Paignton Zoo, the Plymouth aquarium and steam trains for rainy days. Grey weather is the main thing to plan around.

The Loire swaps the beach for warmer weather, a gîte pool and the ZooParc de Beauval, one of Europe's best zoos. Leonardo's machines at Clos Lucé and the flat cycle path help, but children soon tire of château interiors.

The Loire is easier to get around. A regional railway follows the river through most of the main towns, the roads are quiet, and the cycle route lets you travel between towns by bike while your luggage goes ahead.

In Devon, you really do need a car beyond the main-line towns. Even then, the single-track lanes, reversing to passing places and summer queues to the beaches make driving slow work.

In both, the things most worth taking home are edible, and what differs is the produce. Devon's farm shops and markets sell cheese, cider and clotted cream, and its most characterful browsing is the independent and alternative shops along the steep high street of Totnes, or the antiques of Honiton. Exeter and Plymouth provide the familiar chains in their shopping centres.

In the Loire, you buy wine at the cellar door and goat cheese, rillettes and Orléans quince paste at the markets. For something that lasts, there is Gien faience or Saumur leather. The shops in Tours line the streets of its old town and centre, which makes them pleasant to wander, but neither destination is worth visiting for fashion or design.

The Loire is the easier of the two on the budget. Its guesthouses and set lunches are fairly priced and cellar-door wine is cheap for the quality, although château entry fees add up if you visit several a day.

Devon in the school summer break is expensive, especially in Salcombe and the north coast surf villages, and parking and pub meals add to the cost. Torbay, Plymouth and visits in spring or autumn bring prices down.

Both have a solid provincial offer that will fill an evening but is not worth travelling for. Devon's centre of gravity is Plymouth's large Theatre Royal, with choral evensong in Exeter Cathedral and folk sessions in country pubs. The Loire leans on its summer season: sound-and-light shows at the châteaux, chamber music in the Grange de Meslay, and opera in Tours and Angers.

Devon has a slight edge, and its kind of calm is a bracing, salty one. There are cliff-top spa hotels, the Art Deco Tinside Lido below Plymouth Hoe and a habit of year-round cold-water swimming in south-coast coves. Quiet estuary villages are at their most restful outside the peak summer weeks.

The Loire offers a warmer, slower calm built on riverside cycling, long lunches and walks in the gardens of Villandry. Neither has a spa-town tradition, so pampering in the Loire means the spas of converted château hotels, which often base their treatments on grapes and wine.