Yzeron sits on a hillside high in the Monts du Lyonnais, a village of stone houses and a church spire among pasture and spruce woods, with views over the folded hills toward Lyon. It is a cooler, quieter place than the city, which is only about twenty-five kilometres away. In summer, people from Lyon drive up to escape the heat, and in winter a dusting of snow sometimes falls on the high ground, giving the villages an Alpine air. The landscape is made of rounded ridges and wooded gorges, cut by little rivers like the Yzeron itself, which runs down toward the city through a long green valley.
The Monts du Lyonnais are a farming region, known for dairy, orchards and small family businesses, and their villages have kept a lot of their character. Courzieu, Thurins and Saint-Martin-en-Haut each have a church, a bakery and a market day, and the area has long been popular with cyclists, who use the steep local climbs for training. The old stone walls and farm courtyards are common, and the hills are often swathed in morning mist that drifts out of the valleys and clears by mid-morning, leaving a clean, bright sky.
For riders, this is excellent practice country. The roads are narrow, quick and full of bends, rising and falling over small ridges and dropping into wooded valleys, and they are often quiet in the morning. The surface is usually good, though patches of gravel and wet leaves collect on shaded corners, and tractors and cyclists can appear without warning. Fuel is limited in the smallest villages, so it is better to top up in Craponne, a larger town of about eight and a half thousand people, or in Saint-Martin-en-Haut, which has a few thousand and basic services.
If you have time, take a break at a village café and talk to the owner, who may have strong views on the best route to Lyon and a certain pride in the local cheese. The sun sets late in summer, and the light on the hills is soft and golden. After a day on the bike, the lights of Lyon spread out in the dusk like an orange carpet, and the air smells of cut grass and wood smoke.