It is a long way from the valley of Chevreuse, which lies south-west of the capital, and it tells you how a ride that starts with soft forest can end up on the opposite side of the city. Here the landscape is open and slightly bleak, big fields of wheat and sugar beet giving way to housing estates, warehouses and the giant, humming presence of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport to the north-east.
There is a surprising jewel on the ridge above Écouen. The château, built in the sixteenth century for Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France and one of the most powerful men of his age, is a robust Renaissance building with a moat, grand chimneys and rooms that still hold painted ceilings and monumental fireplaces. It now houses the national museum of the Renaissance, with tapestries, ceramics and weapons from the period, and from its terrace you can look out over the plain you have just crossed. The town around it has steep, quiet streets and a village feel that is hard to square with the surrounding sprawl.
Goussainville has a more haunting story. The old village centre, with its church and a few streets, was gradually abandoned in the decades after the airport opened, as aircraft noise made life unbearable, and parts of it stood empty for years, a ghost village on the edge of a major airport. Now some of it is being restored, and the church of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul stands solitary behind a fence. It is an odd, melancholy place for photographers, though you should be respectful of the houses that are still lived in.
Riding here is mostly practical. Roads are wide, with big roundabouts and trucks, and the evening queues on the A1 and the N16 can be long, but the surfaces are good and there is no shortage of fuel, with Villiers-le-Bel, Goussainville and neighbouring towns all offering several stations and supermarkets. Early mornings on weekends are the quiet time, when the sun comes up golden over the fields and the planes glitter as they climb out of Roissy.