Serris is a town that did not exist in its current form forty years ago. Once a small farming village on the plateau of the Brie, east of Paris, it has grown with the new towns of Marne-la-Vallée and the arrival of Disneyland Paris next door, and today it is a mix of modern housing, shopping streets designed to look like an old French town, and the huge Val d'Europe shopping centre. The old village core, with its church and farm buildings, survives at the edge of the new development.
The scale of change here is remarkable. The decision in the 1980s to build the Disney resort on the plateau transformed the area, bringing a motorway junction, a TGV station, hotels and tens of thousands of new residents. On summer evenings, you can see the fireworks over the castle from the surrounding fields and roads. For many visitors, this is the first glimpse of France outside Paris, and it is a strange introduction.
The real countryside begins just beyond the towns. The Brie plateau is a rich farming region of wheat, sugar beet and woods, cut by the valleys of the Marne and its tributaries, the Grand Morin and the Petit Morin, which wind through meadows, villages and wooded slopes. The Marne valley east of Meaux, with its loops, bridges and riverside villages, offers pleasant riding, and the roads climb gently in and out of the valleys, with views over the fields and the river. Brie de Meaux, the famous soft cheese, comes from this region, and Meaux itself has a cathedral and an old bishop's palace.
The Champagne ride heads east along the Marne valley toward Château-Thierry, Épernay and Reims, entering the vineyards near the border between Île-de-France and Champagne. You can take the A4 motorway for speed, but the river roads are much more interesting, with vineyards appearing on the slopes as you approach the champagne country.
Serris and the surrounding towns have every service, including fuel, supermarkets and fast food, and Lagny-sur-Marne, just to the north, has a pleasant old centre by the river. Traffic around the Disney resort and on the A4 can be very heavy, especially at weekends and during the holidays, so leave early in the morning to avoid the worst of it and to reach the quiet roads of the Brie before the rest of the world wakes up.