CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
272 km from Paris to Paris, about 4 h 35 of riding. The stops in between: Palace and Park of Versailles, Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner, Palace and Park of Fontainebleau and back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
This part of the ride is 24 km of Paris → Palace and Park of Versailles.
Paris is a good place to start a ride and a bad place to ride in. The Périphérique, the ring road, carries more than a million vehicles a day, scooters thread through the lanes with great confidence, and cobbles, tram rails and painted crossings are slippery in the wet. The city also operates a low-emission zone, so check the rules and get the right sticker for your bike before you arrive. If you can, leave the bike at the hotel, ride the metro and save the machine for the morning when you head out.
Read the complete Paris write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paris is where the day begins. Next is Palace and Park of Versailles.
Louis XIV wanted a stage on which the whole French nobility would have to perform for him, and Versailles is what that ambition looks like in stone, gilt and gravel. His father's modest hunting lodge on a damp plateau west of Paris grew, over decades of building, into the palace you see now, and in 1682 the court moved out here for good. The Hall of Mirrors, the chapel, the endless enfilade of state rooms: all of it was designed so that a duke had to queue to watch the king get dressed. A long way from the Paris mob, too, which was rather the point, until the mob walked out here in October 1789 and fetched the royal family back to the city.
Read the complete Palace and Park of Versailles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Palace and Park of Versailles comes up 37 km in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Palace and Park of Versailles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
74 km in you reach Palace and Park of Versailles. Next is Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner.
On a gentle rise above the Seine at Poissy, set back from the road in a meadow ringed by trees, a white box floats on thin columns. Villa Savoye is perhaps the most famous house of the twentieth century, designed by Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret for a wealthy family as a weekend retreat and completed in 1931. It is the purest built expression of Le Corbusier's five points of a new architecture: pilotis, a free plan, a free façade, horizontal ribbon windows and a roof garden. Since 2016 it has been part of the World Heritage site of his architectural work, along with the small gardener's lodge at the entrance, a miniature echo of the main house.
Read the complete Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner, about halfway. Next is Palace and Park of Fontainebleau.
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.
Read the complete Palace and Park of Fontainebleau write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Palace and Park of Fontainebleau sits at 147 km, about halfway. Next is back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner comes up 184 km in. Next is back through Palace and Park of Versailles.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Palace and Park of Versailles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
221 km in you reach back through Palace and Park of Versailles. Next is back through Palace and Park of Versailles.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Palace and Park of Versailles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Palace and Park of Versailles, late in the day. Next is Paris.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paris write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 272 km.
Paris → Palace and Park of Versailles is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Palace and Park of Versailles → Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner → Palace and Park of Fontainebleau is 103 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Palace and Park of Fontainebleau → back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner is 103 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner → back through Palace and Park of Versailles is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Palace and Park of Versailles → Paris is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.