Postscript to this: I saw my doctor today, he agreed that my swallowing issue needs checking out - he got me to come back in to have blood taken for tests this very afternoon and is referring me for an ultrasound scan and endoscopy at the Royal Surrey.
I may have to wait a bit for that appointment, but I can’t fault the service I have had from my GP this week.
Over 60 odd years ago before I could drive, I worked in an office in Nottingham and they transferred me to one in Bedford. I spent the week in digs at a private house on an estate and hitch hiked home each Friday night. Due back at work at 9am Monday I had to catch a train very early to Bedford station. Arriving there at about 2am it was a 2 mile walk through forested countryside, in complete darkness. As if that wasn’t scary enough, at one point I passed a darkened factory. I could just make its shape out against the lightening sky but what really froze my bones was the low humming sound that emitted from it. Even though I knew it was there I never did get used to it and was very well pleased when I was transferred back to Nottingham. There was a tv series at the time ‘The Quatermass Experiment’ and that had some very eerie episodes which didn’t help.
So I know what you mean. 
Especially the one where the jelly monsters were hiding in the big silos near the rocket launch - was only young but remember that episode well and recently Quatermass and the Pit has been on several times on the film channels, old hat now lilke original Dr.Who but scary at the time!
Sorry for the drift @Motherrobyn but the worst for me was a man staggering down the steps on a large storage tank, like a gasometer, trailing a nameless black slime down the side of the tank. 
@David_Spardo no worries, both of your stories sound disturbing. 
Drifting back to topic.
Have you been to or ever considered ´Esvres’ ?
Its about 15 mins from Saint Avertin and 25 mins from Tours city centre by car.
There is a gare so is must by about 15 mins to Tours by train.
There is most certainly a river and a very nice one too.
It ticks all your boxes. Unless there is a box I have missed to tick.
Other places to consider are Montbazon, Blere, Montouis sur Loire, or even Rochecorbon. Rochecorbon being very famous of course.
You are using Le Bon Coin to properties ?
Not sure she needs MORE choice? But less.
Depends if you have heard of the place. I have never heard of it and I live 15 mins away. Our cat sitter lives there so that is how I discovered it. A very pretty town that nobody has ever heard of. Deep in the countryside yet 15 mins from a major city. That is the place you want to live.
@Loire, yes, we have considered Esvres, thanks. Very pretty little place, but out of our price range, just like everywhere else that is REALLY close to Tours. We’ve also looked at all of your other suggestions with the exception of Rochecorbon. As I mentioned in one of my many 
posts, we’ve been looking for a year and a half now, and have covered a lot of ground.
Unlike most of our friends who moved here from overseas, we had not been vacationing in France for years. Our friends all knew pretty much where they wanted to live. We, OTOH, made one scouting trip, which confirmed our desire to move here (because I’d been researching countries all over the world), and that trip was almost entirely spent in Amboise and its surroundings. When we moved, we lived very near Saumur, but drove all over the valley looking. We’re retired, so we have plenty of free time. We can usually tell right away if a village or town is going to work - if there’s no boulangerie or a handful of restaurants, and nothing else going on, it’s out. I am actually drawn to the little tiny places that have nothing, but it’s just a fantasy. I would go mad. My favorite little village is where I get my hair cut - about 250 people and almost no services other than the coiffeur. Every time I go there, I think that I could live there. Ha, for about a week.
I look at Leboncoin, SeLoger, Bien’ici, and several others that I can’t remember off the top of my head. Whenever we drive through a place that looks like it might work, I check out as many real estate ads as I can find, to get an idea of whether or not it’s in our price range.
Thanks again for the suggestions!
I used to find sites like Leboncoin useful for finding out which immobiliers covered which areas, and then I’d go and look directly. I had the impression that LBC, SL, LI etc was where the immos put their hard-to-sell properties.
LBC is the biggest housing site in France. It is what it is.
Houses that will sell quickly will never get advertised on any site by an estate agent. Its so expensive to advertise on Seloger for example for an estate agent. It is like 1 k + a month for ten properties. Or something stupid like that.
We had our house valued earlier this year and the guy said I already have 10 + people to view it from Paris or wherever. It really depends on how far you want to push the price. A lot of properties in sort after city areas where people need to live and work are in high demand so will never be put online.
But like you said, the iffy ones will end up on LBC.
I’ll be dealing directly with agents when it comes time to buy - I don’t even trust that half of those properties are actually available anyway. It’s just a way to look and see what’s out there.
Those fees are absolutely ridiculous. Don’t even get me started on the lack of an MLS in France. 
Maybe you should choose another region of France.
We are moving on soon. Val du Loire is not the same place as it used to be.
Keep your options open. A place within 30 mins of Orleans/Tours/Anger/Nantes are the only ones I would consider. You need to be close to a hospital and medical specialists. Rule number 1. But believe me, even the services in thease cities are stretched and waiting times are long.
Was not like that 10 years ago. And it will only get worse.
Wow, I can tell that you’re really not a fan! Where would you suggest that we look, then?
Our first choice town has a hospital within walking distance of the centre. Second choice is…hmm, like 15 minutes from a hospital by car? Distant third choice has hospitals, I just don’t the layout yet.
I suspected that I had melanoma earlier this year. I made an appointment online with a local doc that I didn’t know (I didn’t have an MT at the time), saw her, she had a teleconference with the hospital in Tours, and I then had an appointment there (they got me in right away), which included a biopsy. I went on vacation right after the biopsy. I got a phone call while away confirming melanoma and an appointment was made for the day after we returned. Total time between my initial appointment and surgery was 20 days, which of course included waiting for biopsy results and our vacation. OH has an ongoing medical issue that requires regular monitoring. His docs are in Tours as well. He had an appointment scheduled for the day before yesterday, but canceled it because of the strikes - he was taking public transit and didn’t want to risk it. He already has another appointment scheduled for less than a month from now. He’s super happy with the care that he’s receiving.
We can’t complain, honestly.
I forget to say, don’t think for one minute the price of a house being advertised is the price the house will sell at.
Most houses are advertised 100k + more than they are worth.
So you probably will find that the areas that interest you are not out of your price range.
An example, our friends advertised their town house (very big) for 580k. I said (not to them) that it was worth 350 k. It sold over 2 years later for 380k. I was not far off.
So the moral of the story, don’t believe the price is correct. It won’t be. Don’t be afraid to offer a 100 k + less if you think that is a gair price.
So I’ve heard, but that’s crazy to me. What is the point? Do people think that they’ll find someone who has no idea what their property is worth? Or is that just the way it is, and everyone knows that everything is wildly overpriced?
Where my daughter lives in Nashville, they can see all the properties locally and what people paid for them/what price they are currently for sale where applicable. Very interesting to see a current neighbour and what they paid in 2017, what they are trying to sell for today and previous sale prices. Never seen anything like it here or in the UK.
There’s a French website that shows what prices houses and flats near us sold for when they last changed hands.
Talking to our agents they despair that people insist on setting higher prices because to them their house is perfect. I saw a wonderful house that was way over, and the agent practically begged me to put in a very low offer to make the owners wake up. I didn’t but I did send an email to the agent saying how much over I thought it was. Needless to say it is still on the market.
I inagine that once one reaches a certain age then nowhere is the same place it used to be. Our area certainly isn’t. Some much appreciated things have gone, but in general there are new things that have replaced them and places stay alive and vibrant - just in a different way. After all I can buy fresh ginger in local shop, which was unheard of when we arrived.
I’m not going to go all, “It’s better in the US”, because I understand that it’s a totally different system here. However, most people in the US use an agent, and most listing contracts are exclusive, so even if the seller finds their own buyer, they still owe a commission to the agent. That makes it easier for an agent to just refuse a listing if the sellers are asking too much. As a listing broker, since it was expensive and time consuming to list a house (again, it’s very different in the US), I was not about to agree to a wildly overinflated listing amount. If the seller insisted, I’d just ask them to find another agent.
Sometimes the seller and I would disagree on the listing price, but not by much. In that case, I’d list at their price with the understanding that if we had no offers within the first two weeks (again, very different!), we’d drop the price to what I had recommended. It must be hard to be an agent here in a lot of ways. It’s hard in the US too, but for different reasons!