Fontainebleau is the palace French kings actually lived in, as opposed to the one they built to impress, and for that reason it feels more human than Versailles. Almost every monarch from the Middle Ages to Napoleon III added a wing, a staircase or a garden, so the place is a jumble of styles, held together by its forest and its long ponds. Napoleon called it the true home of kings, and in April 1814 he said goodbye to his Old Guard in the courtyard that is still known as the Cour des Adieux, at the foot of the horseshoe staircase.
The town of Fontainebleau sits around the palace, with Avon next door, about sixty kilometres southeast of Paris. It is the usual place for Parisian riders to escape to, and the attraction is the forest that surrounds it: some twenty thousand hectares of oak, beech and Scots pine on sandy soil, scattered with weird sandstone boulders that climbers come from all over Europe to scale. The roads through it, the old N6 and N7 alignments and the smaller forest routes, are smooth and flowing, shaded on hot days and lovely in October when the beeches turn copper.
Be warned, though: the forest roads are popular with everybody, limits are low and enforced, and on Sundays you share them with cyclists, walkers, horse riders and families pulling into the car parks. Deer and wild boar cross at dawn and dusk. Ride it early or on a weekday and it is a pleasure; ride it at Sunday lunchtime and it is a procession. The Seine valley to the east, around Samoreau and Samois, gives some quieter curves along the river.
The painters of Barbizon on the western edge of the forest, Millet, Rousseau and friends, worked outdoors here in the mid-nineteenth century and helped open the door to Impressionism; their village is a short detour. Practically, Fontainebleau has everything: fuel on the main roads in and out, plenty of cafes and brasseries around the palace and the main street, and a big park to rest in. Palace grounds are free to walk; the interiors need a ticket and a couple of hours, which is time well spent if the weather turns.