Saint-Riquier is a small village in the Somme, a few kilometres from Abbeville, and it punches far above its weight. In the early Middle Ages it was the site of Centula, one of the most important monasteries of the Carolingian empire, ruled by Angilbert, a courtier and son-in-law of Charlemagne, who made it a centre of learning and prayer with hundreds of monks. The great abbey church you see today is later, a Gothic building with a richly carved facade, but the scale of the place still reflects that history. The belfry, a solid square tower in the village, was a symbol of the townspeople's rights and is one of the belfries listed by UNESCO in Belgium and France.
The abbey buildings host exhibitions, and every summer the village holds a festival of classical music, filling the church with concerts. The rest of the year, Saint-Riquier is quiet, with a handful of houses, shops and cafés around the square.
The Somme valley is gentle countryside: chalk plateaus, fields of wheat and sugar beet, small woods and the wide valley of the river with its marshes, ponds and poplars. To the west, the Bay of the Somme is a vast estuary where the tide goes out for miles, home to seals, birds and salt meadows where sheep graze, giving their meat a distinctive flavour. Abbeville, the nearest town, was heavily bombed in 1940 but has a fine Gothic church and makes a good base.
The riding is relaxed rather than thrilling: straight roads across the plateau, gentle curves in the valleys and very little traffic on the back roads. The coast road along the bay offers wide views and the chance to stop at villages like Saint-Valery-sur-Somme and Le Crotoy, popular with visitors in summer. Wind and rain are frequent, and the roads can be slippery with mud near farms.
Saint-Riquier has a few local services but no guarantee of fuel. Abbeville, about nine kilometres away, has fuel, supermarkets and everything else. Try a ficelle picarde, a pancake rolled with ham and mushrooms and baked with cream and cheese, or local sheep from the salt meadows, followed by a gâteau battu, a rich brioche.