Few villages have as much weight on their shoulders as Auvers-sur-Oise. Vincent van Gogh came here in May 1890, lodged in a small room above an inn, and in the seventy days he stayed painted around seventy canvases, among them the church, the wheat fields and the town hall bedecked with flags, before he died of a gunshot wound in July. He and his brother Theo lie side by side in the little cemetery above the fields, under a blanket of ivy. The room he rented at the Auberge Ravoux is preserved almost bare, and it is more moving for being so small.
He was not alone in loving this valley. Daubigny settled here before him and painted from a floating studio on the Oise, and Pissarro, Cézanne and Corot all worked in and around the village. At roughly seventy metres above sea level, the Oise here runs wide and slow between poplars, with low chalk hills behind, and you can understand why painters liked the light. The village has about seven thousand people, enough for a couple of bakeries, restaurants and cafés, which in season fill with day trippers who come to follow the painter's footsteps.
For a rider it is a food stop, and a good one if you arrive before the coach parties or after they leave. The roads in are pleasant, running along the river and climbing a short way to the plateau, with bends that call for attention rather than speed. Traffic can be heavy at weekends in summer, with cars searching for parking, and the lanes around the church are narrow and cobbled in places. Leave the bike on the edge and walk up.
Climb to the church and the cemetery behind it, and the wheat fields that Van Gogh painted stretch out beyond the wall. In June they are green and gold, and the crows that wheel above them are a quiet allusion to his last great painting. Take an hour if you can. The village sells postcards and prints, but the best souvenir is the view from the top of the hill, with the valley and a distant line of trees on a clear afternoon.