Avallon and Clamecy are the towns around, and in between lie meadows full of white Charolais cattle, stone villages with slate-grey roofs and the ruins of a hundred old mills along the streams.
Corbigny is a small town of the Nièvre, on a branch of the Canal du Nivernais, which was dug in the nineteenth century mainly to float firewood and timber to Paris. The wood was cut in the forests of the Morvan and sent downstream in huge rafts, a trade that lasted for centuries and made Clamecy its capital, and the writer Romain Rolland was born in Clamecy in 1866. The town has a medieval abbey church, Saint-Léonard, and a quiet market, and it is the sort of place where the café owner knows everyone by name.
The ride is named for the Climats, the little vineyard plots of the Côte d'Or that UNESCO recognised in 2015, a good hundred kilometres to the east. They are some of the most precisely mapped vineyards in the world, each one with its own name, and the Burgundy wines grown on them have been prized for a thousand years. Here, in the Morvan, the landscape is wilder and much more rural, and you will find riding that is quiet and unhurried. The roads are small, with gentle curves, patchy surfaces and a lot of agricultural traffic, and the signposts point to villages with names you might have to say twice.
Fuel is a point to plan. Avallon, with nearly nine thousand people, is the nearest town with several stations, and smaller places like Joux-la-Ville offer little. Stock up before heading into the hills, and pack a thermos. After a day in the vineyards, the forest feels cool and wide, and the wind in the beech trees makes a sound like the sea.