The four rivers

The honest version is that any of these four rivers will give you a good week, and the differences between them are about what you want to look at rather than about quality. Ask yourself one question before you read any operator’s page: is this trip about history, about wine, or about neither in particular?

If it is history (Paris, Impressionism, cathedral towns, the Normandy landings) the Seine is the answer and the others are compromises. If it is wine as the organising idea rather than as a pleasant feature, Bordeaux keeps the entire week inside one region with short hops between moorings. If it is food, cities and a change of climate, the Rhône and Saône start in Burgundy and finish in Provence, which is a lot of France in one week.

The second question

Which airport you can reasonably get to. Seine itineraries turn round in Paris; Rhône itineraries usually mean Lyon or Marseille and often run one way, which means two airports; Bordeaux itineraries begin and end in the same city, which is the simplest arrangement of the three. This is duller than the landscape and it changes the price more.

And the Loire

The Loire is a specialist choice. One operator publishes a multi-day cabin cruise on it, aboard one ship, from Nantes. That makes it a genuinely interesting trip for someone who has already done a French river and wants something else, and a strange first choice for someone who has not.