Larks sing over the wheat around Sours, and on a still summer morning that and the tick of a cooling engine may be the only sounds. The village sits on the open plain of the Beauce, a few kilometres east of Chartres, with a church, a cluster of houses and farms, and fields that run to the horizon in every direction. It is a place of enormous skies, where the weather can be watched approaching from far away.
The Beauce was immortalised by the poet Charles Péguy, who walked across it to Chartres in 1912 after his son fell seriously ill, and wrote a long poem presenting the plain to the Virgin of Chartres, describing the sea of wheat and the cathedral rising from it like a ship. His pilgrimage inspired a tradition that continues today: every year at Pentecost, thousands of pilgrims walk from Paris to Chartres across these fields. Even on a motorcycle, you can share some of their feeling as the twin spires appear on the horizon long before the city itself.
The plain is not as empty as it looks. The cereal fields are home to birds that nest on the ground, including skylarks, partridges and harriers, which glide low over the crops hunting for voles. Conservation groups work with farmers to protect the nests of Montagu's harriers during the harvest. In winter flocks of lapwings and golden plovers gather in the fields, and the wind turbines that have sprung up across the plain turn steadily in the constant breeze.
The riding is simple and fast: long, straight roads, gentle undulations and wide views, with little traffic outside the main routes. The wind is the main challenge, buffeting the bike on exposed stretches, and the roads can be muddy during the harvest and the sowing seasons, when tractors carry soil onto the tarmac. In summer, with the fields golden and the sky blue, the plain has a stark beauty; in winter, under low grey clouds, it can feel bleak.
Sours has few services, so for fuel, food and supplies, head to Chartres or its suburbs, such as Le Coudray, which have supermarkets and stations. Chartres has many cafés and restaurants around the cathedral, and the old lower town by the Eure, with its bridges, mills and wash houses, is a charming place for a walk. Carry water in summer, as shade is almost nonexistent on the plain.