The name gives away the story. Until the Revolution, Neuville-les-Dames was the seat of a chapter of noble canonesses, a community of aristocratic women who lived here under a religious rule but without the strict vows of nuns. To be admitted, a young woman had to prove several generations of noble ancestry on both sides of the family. They lived in comfortable houses around the church, wore elegant habits and could leave to marry if they wished. The chapter was dissolved in the 1790s, but the dames stayed in the village's name.
Today Neuville is a quiet farming village on the northern edge of the Dombes, beside the little river Chalaronne. The land around it is flat to gently undulating, with fields, hedges, small woods and the first of the ponds that make the Dombes so distinctive. Herons stand motionless in the shallows, and in spring the air rings with frogs.
Calling this a high point is generous; the Dombes is a plateau with barely a hill on it. But the slight rise of the land here gives you long, low views across the fields, and on a clear evening the Beaujolais hills stand out to the west across the Saône valley, with the Jura ridges faint in the east.
The roads are a pleasure to cruise. They wind gently between ponds and farms, with very little traffic and generally decent tarmac, though some lanes are narrow and the edges soft. Watch for mud from farm vehicles and for wildlife at dusk. Fuel is available in Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne, a few minutes away, a lovely little town with a covered timber market hall and flower-decked bridges over the river.