Pilat Ridge and Rhône View

3 passes in 420 km, topping out at 1340 m

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Why this ride

A rider’s loop: clean exit, memorable middle, calm return. Out of Saint-Jean-de-Niost and back again: 420 km, roughly 8 h 44 in the saddle. It goes by way of Hurigny, near Chandon and Brignais. The climbs: in Roche-la-Molière, near La Côte-Saint-André and Scenic stretch in Saint-Jean-de-Bournay.

Roadbook

1. Fuel stop in Saint-Jean-de-Niost fuel

   Fuel at 0 km.

2. Near Hurigny, on the way back swim

   You are in the Mâconnais, the southern end of Burgundy, where chardonnay vines cover the limestone hills and the villages are built of honey-coloured stone. Hurigny, La Roche-Vineuse and Sancé are small places within a few kilometres of each other, each with a church and a bakery, and Charnay-lès-Mâcon, with about seven thousand people, offers fuel and a supermarket. Mâcon itself lies a short way to the east on the Saône. The label calls this a swim stop, which is optimistic, but the countryside is lovely for a quiet pause.

   The great landmark of the district is the Rock of Solutré, a limestone crag topping out at nearly five hundred metres above sea level that rises abruptly from the vineyards a few kilometres to the south-west, with its neighbour the Rock of Vergisson. At Solutré, archaeologists found a huge prehistoric site where hunters, tens of thousands of years ago, are thought to have driven wild horses over the cliff, and the bones of thousands of animals have been found at the base. The rock gives its name to a whole prehistoric culture, the Solutrean, and is among the best known sites of the Stone Age in Europe. A walk to the top takes about half an hour and offers a vast view.

   North-west of here, about twenty-five kilometres off, lies Cluny, where in the Middle Ages the greatest monastery in Christendom stood. Its abbey was the head of a network of over a thousand monasteries across Europe, and its church was the largest in the world until St Peter's in Rome was rebuilt. Only fragments remain, but they are impressive. The wines of the Mâconnais, especially Pouilly-Fuissé and Saint-Véran, are the white wines that pair so well with the local goat's cheeses, which come in small cylinders and are sold in every market.

   The roads here are made for gentle touring, with rolling hills, vineyard lanes and farm tracks, and the surface is generally good. In September and October the harvest brings tractors and lorries, but also a lovely atmosphere. Spring and autumn are best.

3. Food stop near Chandon food

   Chandon is a small village in the far north of the Loire department, close to the borders of Burgundy and the Rhône, in a landscape of green pastures, hedges and gentle hills. The white Charolais cattle grazing in the fields tell you that you are on the edge of the Brionnais, and the farms, churches and villages are built of warm, honey-coloured stone.

   The nearest town of any size is Charlieu, a few kilometres to the north-east, and it is well worth a visit. Its Benedictine abbey, founded in the ninth century, has a magnificent Romanesque portal, among the finest in Burgundy, and the town was once a centre of silk weaving, with a museum dedicated to the craft. The old streets, with half-timbered houses and Gothic façades, are lovely.

   As a food stop, Charlieu is the best choice nearby, with restaurants and cafés serving the hearty food of the region: Charolais beef, local cheeses and charcuterie. Roanne, about twenty kilometres to the south-west, is a larger town with a long gastronomic reputation and plenty of choice.

   The riding around Chandon is relaxed and scenic. Roads wind through the hills, past farms and villages, with gentle bends and good surfaces. Traffic is light. The Loire valley to the west and the hills of the Beaujolais to the east offer more varied riding. Fuel is available in Charlieu and Roanne.

4. Photo stop in Roche-la-Molière pass

   Coal made Roche-la-Molière. The town sits on the western edge of the Saint-Étienne basin, and for generations its hillsides were dotted with pit heads, slag heaps and miners' terraces. The mines are long closed, the spoil tips have grassed over, and today it is a quiet residential town of around ten thousand people with a château on its hill and good views back towards the city and the dark ridge of the Pilat beyond.

   If you are riding out of Saint-Étienne, this is where the urban sprawl finally loosens. Head west and north and you drop towards the Loire gorges, where the river has carved a deep, wooded trench and been dammed into the long Lac de Grangent. The roads along the gorge rim are a joy: tight, cambered and lightly used outside summer weekends, with medieval ruins perched on rocky spurs above the water. The Saint-Victor-sur-Loire side is particularly good for a pause by the lake.

   South-east, across the city, rises the Massif du Pilat, a granite ridge with beech and fir forests and roads that climb to more than a thousand metres, with views over the Rhône valley to the Alps on a clear day. It makes a fine contrast with the post-industrial basin you start from.

   Saint-Étienne itself is an underrated place: it built arms, bicycles and ribbons, and its old Manufrance mail-order company was once known across France. The football club and its green shirts are a local religion. For practicalities, Roche-la-Molière has fuel, supermarkets and bakeries, and the wider Saint-Étienne area has everything a rider could need. Traffic can be heavy at rush hour, so a mid-morning departure makes the climb out of the basin far more pleasant.

5. Brignais finish

   Brignais is where the ride hands you back to Lyon. It sits in the valley of the Garon on the south-western edge of the city, a busy town of shops, light industry and housing estates, with the Monts du Lyonnais rising gently behind it and the Pilat a blue shadow further south. After a day on the ridges it is an unglamorous but very practical finish.

   Its name lives on in the history books for a battle that went badly wrong. In 1362 a royal French army met the free companies, bands of unpaid soldiers left over from the Hundred Years' War who were pillaging the region, near Brignais. The mercenaries, who held the high ground, crushed the knights sent to stop them, and the defeat left the Lyonnais at their mercy for years. There is little to see today, but it is a reminder that this quiet suburb was once on the front line of a very different kind of war.

   The countryside around is still farming land, with orchards, market gardens and small vineyards on the slopes of the Coteaux du Lyonnais. In spring the cherry trees around Vourles and Charly flower white, and in early summer the farm stalls fill with cherries and apricots.

   Coming in from the Pilat, the roads change character fast. The flowing bends of the hills give way to roundabouts, traffic lights and commuter traffic. The A450 and the old national roads funnel everything towards Lyon, and the evening rush can be dense. Watch for buses, cyclists and drivers changing lanes without warning.

   Brignais has every service a town of twelve thousand needs, with fuel stations on the main roads, supermarkets and plenty of cafés. If you want a last beer before the city swallows you, the centre has a few terraces where you can sit, peel off your gloves and argue about the best corner of the day.

6. High point near La Côte-Saint-André pass

   Hector Berlioz was born in La Côte-Saint-André in 1803, and the town has never let anyone forget it. His family home is now a museum, and every summer a festival in his name fills the courtyard of the château with orchestras. It is a fine reason to linger, but the town has other charms too: a huge medieval covered market hall with a timber roof, steep lanes, and the distillery of Cherry Rocher, which has been making liqueurs here since the early eighteenth century.

   The town clings to a slope on the edge of the Bièvre plain, a broad, flat corridor between Lyon and Grenoble, with the wooded Chambaran plateau rising to the south. From the higher streets, the view on a clear morning takes in the long blue line of the Vercors, the Chartreuse and, beyond, the snowy summits of Belledonne. That view is a good tonic before heading towards the Oisans and the hairpins of Alpe d'Huez.

   The roads around here are relaxed and rural. The Bièvre itself is flat and straight, but the Chambaran lanes wind through chestnut woods and small valleys with very little traffic, ideal for warming up tyres and minds. Watch for gravel in the forest corners and for farm machinery in summer. The plain can be windy, and in midsummer the heat bounces off the fields.

   La Côte-Saint-André has fuel, bakeries, cafés and restaurants around the market hall, and it is a much nicer place to eat than the motorway service areas on the A48. A plate of local walnuts or a gratin dauphinois brings you firmly into Isère territory. Fill up here; once you head into the Chambaran woods the villages get small, and the next big service town is Grenoble or Voiron.

7. Scenic stretch in Saint-Jean-de-Bournay pass

   There is a particular kind of French country town that exists mainly to serve the farms around it, and Saint-Jean-de-Bournay is a good example: a square with plane trees, a church, a café where the same men have been drinking their morning coffee for decades, a pharmacy, a bakery and a weekly market. It sits in a shallow valley in the hills of the Bas-Dauphiné, about twenty-five kilometres east of Vienne, and it does not try to be anything else.

   What makes it worth a pause is the country around it. The hills here roll in every direction, low enough to be gentle and high enough to give views: east towards the limestone wall of the Chartreuse and the jagged Belledonne, west towards the dark mass of the Pilat beyond the Rhône. Walnut trees line the lanes, hedges divide pastures from maize, and the farmhouses are built of rounded river stones laid in herringbone patterns, a building style typical of the Dauphiné.

   The roads between Saint-Jean, Châtonnay, Artas and Villeneuve-de-Marc are made for unhurried riding. They twist across the hills with no particular logic, climbing over crests and dipping into small valleys, and they rarely carry more than the odd tractor or local car. Surfaces are mostly sound, though there is gravel at field entrances and the odd patch of broken tarmac in the shaded corners. The run west towards Vienne drops gradually towards the Rhône and makes a gentle way to wind the day down.

   For a finish, the town has fuel, a supermarket and a couple of places to eat. Sit on the square for a while, watch the light turn gold over the rooftops, and let the engine tick as it cools.

8. Back to Pilat Ridge finish

   The Rhône is the main character here. Pilat, the ridge in the ride's name, is on the other side of Lyon altogether, so this is an end of day well away from the hills.

   The roads are flat and quiet, and the interest lies in the setting. The river has been tamed here by canals and hydroelectric works, but the old braided channels and wooded islands survive and are a nature reserve, with herons, kingfishers and in winter large flocks of ducks. Beyond the plain, to the east, the escarpment of the Balmes Dauphinoises rises as a low, wooded line, and a few of its little roads make a pleasant detour if you have energy left. The surface is generally good, bends are gentle, and a spring evening here is cool and smells of wet earth and river mud.

   History is quietly present. The Rhône was a trade route since Roman times, and the town of Crémieu, a few kilometres east on the edge of the Isle Crémieu plateau, preserves a medieval market hall and ruined fortifications that are worth a look. The villages here have the typical Dauphiné pisé, rammed earth walls, in older farm buildings, a building style that is unusual and unexpectedly beautiful in the late light.

   Fuel is the point to plan. These villages are small, so the usual choice is Tignieu, about nine kilometres away, which is a town of over five thousand and has stations and supermarkets. Saint-Maurice-de-Gourdans is large enough to have a bakery and a bar, and is a good place for a coffee or a sandwich. Lyon's eastern ring road and the A42 motorway are not far away, so the final run back to the city is easy.

   As an ending, it is an unglamorous, peaceful place, a long way from the ridge in the name but pleasant in its own right. If the weather is clear, it is worth stopping on a riverbank, turning off the engine, and listening to the water.

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