Pierrefonds looks like a fairy-tale castle because, to a large extent, it is one. The original fortress was built at the end of the fourteenth century by Louis d'Orléans, brother of King Charles VI, and was dismantled in the seventeenth century when the crown was taming the great nobles. For two centuries it stood as a romantic ruin above the village. Then Napoleon III, who loved the nearby palace of Compiègne, commissioned the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to rebuild it, and Viollet-le-Duc did so with more imagination than strict archaeology: towers, battlements, carved beasts, painted halls. Film crews have used it for medieval stories ever since.
The village beneath it is small and charming, with a lake at its foot where the castle reflects on still mornings. A handful of crêperies, cafés and restaurants serve the visitors, and on a sunny day eating outside with the towers above you is a fine way to spend an hour. If you want to see inside the castle, allow time; it is managed as a national monument and the visit is worth it for the sheer theatre of the rooms.
The ride in from Compiègne crosses the eastern side of the great forest, on roads that run straight between ranks of beech and then dip and curve as the land falls towards the Pierrefonds valley. It is easy, scenic riding rather than anything technical. Around the village, the roads wind more, climbing out of the valley through farmland and woods, and on a weekday you will meet very little traffic. Weekends bring day-trippers from Paris, cyclists and horse riders, so take the bends with a little reserve.
Pierrefonds has around two thousand inhabitants, so fuel is not something to count on here; Compiègne, about thirteen kilometres away, is the reliable option. The area is green and damp, with rich clay soils, and after rain the forest roads stay wet longer than you might expect under the trees. In spring and autumn the forest smells of moss and leaf mould, and the castle, catching the late sun, is one of the best photographs in the Île-de-France orbit.