Why this ride
From Tignieu it runs 893 km to Montluel; allow about 14 h 40 of riding. It goes by way of in Ceyzériat, Scenic stretch near Tarare and Boën-sur-Lignon. The climbs: in Neuville-les-Dames and near Belleville.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Vanoise Gateway Overnight + Jura Wine Roads and Cascades
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 893 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 14 h 40
- Journey
- One way; return travel is separate
Distance and timing basis
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.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Fuel stop near Tignieu
A little north of Tignieu-Jameyzieu, the land runs down to the Rhône, and the river makes a broad, braided sweep across the plain before it reaches Lyon. On the far bank lies the Plaine de l'Ain, a wide gravel terrace of farms and industrial zones, and upstream the hills of the Bugey begin to rise. It is a landscape of crossings: bridges at Loyettes and Lagnieu, gravel pits turned into lakes, and long views towards the mountains.
Read the complete Fuel stop near Tignieu write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Vanoise Gateway Overnight is where the day begins. Next is Food stop in Ceyzériat.
2. Food stop in Ceyzériat
Ceyzériat lies at the foot of the Revermont, just east of Bourg-en-Bresse, where the flat Bresse plain meets the first limestone ridge of the Jura. Behind the village, the wooded slopes rise steeply, and the hill of Mont July above it offers a viewpoint over the Bresse, with the Alps sometimes visible far to the south-east on clear days.
Read the complete Food stop in Ceyzériat write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Food stop in Ceyzériat is where this day stops to eat. Next is High point in Neuville-les-Dames.
3. High point in Neuville-les-Dames
The name gives away the story. Until the Revolution, Neuville-les-Dames was the seat of a chapter of noble canonesses, a community of aristocratic women who lived here under a religious rule but without the strict vows of nuns. To be admitted, a young woman had to prove several generations of noble ancestry on both sides of the family. They lived in comfortable houses around the church, wore elegant habits and could leave to marry if they wished. The chapter was dissolved in the 1790s, but the dames stayed in the village's name.
Read the complete High point in Neuville-les-Dames write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
This is where the road stops climbing. Next is Scenic stretch near Tarare.
4. Scenic stretch near Tarare
Muslin made Tarare's fortune. From the eighteenth century onwards the town wove fine, light cotton cloth that was sold across Europe, and every few years it still celebrates the fact with the Fête des Mousselines, when the streets and façades disappear under kilometres of draped fabric in a riot of colour. Outside festival time, Tarare is a quiet valley town in the hills between the Beaujolais and the Lyonnais, with old mill buildings and a long main street.
Read the complete Scenic stretch near Tarare write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Scenic stretch near Tarare, early in the day. Next is Lyon / Rhône-Alpes rides return.
5. Near Boën-sur-Lignon, on the way back
The Lignon du Forez comes out of the Monts du Forez with a cold, clean hurry, and by the time it reaches the plain around Boën it has cut itself a shallow gorge through old volcanic rock. This is the country west of Lyon and north of Saint-Étienne that most people cross on the autoroute without noticing, and that is exactly why it is pleasant. The Forez plain is a wide, flat bowl of pasture and orchards, and the mountains stand along its western edge like a wall with the road folded into the foot of it.
Read the complete Lyon / Rhône-Alpes rides write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Lyon / Rhône-Alpes rides return sits at 222 km, early in the day. Next is Photo stop near La Ricamarie.
6. Photo stop near La Ricamarie
La Ricamarie is a former mining town on the south-western edge of Saint-Étienne, where the coal basin meets the first slopes of the Pilat. For more than a century, the pits here produced the coal that fed the factories of the Stéphanois region, and the town still carries the marks of that history: workers' houses, old slag heaps grown over with trees, and a strong sense of community.
Read the complete Photo stop near La Ricamarie write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Photo stop near La Ricamarie comes up 278 km in. Next is Vanoise Gateway Overnight checkpoint 8.
7. Neuville-sur-Saône
Julius Caesar noticed the Saône. In his account of the Gallic Wars he wrote that the river flows with such incredible slowness that the eye cannot tell in which direction it is moving, and two thousand years later, standing on the quay at Neuville, you can see what he meant. The river here is wide, brown-green and almost still, and the reflections of the plane trees on the bank barely ripple.
Read the complete Neuville-sur-Saône write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Vanoise Gateway Overnight checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is Back to Vanoise Gateway.
8. Back to Vanoise Gateway
This is the Isle Crémieu area, the low limestone plateau that pushes the river into a wide bend east of Lyon, and the landscape of fields, gravel pits, poplars and small villages has an unhurried feel.
Read the complete Vanoise Gateway write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Finish at Back to Vanoise Gateway. That is the ride. Next is Jura Wine Roads and Cascades.
9. Fuel stop near Montluel
Montluel is the kind of small French town that most people only see as a sign on the A42, which is a shame. It climbs a slope above the little River Sereine, on the escarpment that the locals call the Côtière, the step where the Rhône plain to the south rises up onto the plateau of the Dombes. For centuries this was border country: Montluel belonged to the House of Savoy and only became French with the Treaty of Lyon in 1601, and the old centre still has the narrow, defensive feel of a frontier town.
Read the complete Fuel stop near Montluel write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Next is Food stop near Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne.
10. Food stop near Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne
Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne sits just above the Saône, where the little Chalaronne river ends its slow journey across the Dombes and slips into the bigger river near Thoissey. From the edge of the village the land drops to the Val de Saône, a broad floodplain of meadows and poplar rows, and across the water the slopes of the Beaujolais rise in neat green ranks of vines.
Read the complete Food stop near Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Food stop near Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne is where this day stops to eat. Next is High point near Belleville.
11. High point near Belleville
Belleville-en-Beaujolais lies on the Saône at the foot of the Beaujolais hills, and it has one treasure that surprises most visitors: an eighteenth-century Hôtel-Dieu, a charitable hospital with great wards lined with curtained beds, a chapel and an apothecary with its original jars. It served the sick for more than two centuries and is now a museum, one of the best-preserved hospitals of its kind in France.
Read the complete High point near Belleville write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
High point near Belleville is the summit of this stretch. Next is Scenic stretch near Aveize.
12. Scenic stretch near Aveize
High in the Monts du Lyonnais, Aveize looks out over a rolling plateau of meadows, hedgerows and small woods, where dairy farming has shaped the landscape for centuries. It is a modest village with a church and scattered farms, typical of these hills west of Lyon, where the air is fresher than in the city and the pace of life slower.
Read the complete Scenic stretch near Aveize write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Scenic stretch near Aveize, late in the day.
13. Near Sury-le-Comtal, on the way back
The Forez plain is one of those places you do not notice until you are in it: a wide, flat basin of the upper Loire, ringed by the Monts du Forez to the west and the Monts du Lyonnais to the east. This stop lies on its southern half, between Précieux, Sury-le-Comtal and Saint-Romain-le-Puy, in a country of fields, hedges, scattered farms and, here and there, the glint of a pond.
Read the complete Near Sury-le-Comtal, on the way back write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Lyon / Rhône-Alpes rides return sits at 666 km, late in the day. Next is Photo stop near Le Péage-de-Roussillon.
14. Photo stop near Le Péage-de-Roussillon
In 1564, during a royal tour of France, the young king Charles IX stayed at the château of Roussillon, on the hill above what is now Le Péage-de-Roussillon, and signed an edict there that fixed the start of the year on 1 January across the kingdom. Until then, different regions began the year at Easter, Christmas or other dates. The château still stands, a Renaissance building with an elegant courtyard, overlooking the Rhône valley.
Read the complete Photo stop near Le Péage-de-Roussillon write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Photo stop near Le Péage-de-Roussillon comes up 722 km in. Next is Jura Wine Roads and Cascades checkpoint 8.
15. Near Neuville-sur-Saône
On the west bank of the Saône, opposite Neuville, the land rises quickly from the river into the Monts d'Or. This stop sits on that slope between Chasselay and Albigny-sur-Saône, where the last suburbs of Lyon fade into orchards, stone walls and small vineyards, and the hills begin to glow golden in the evening light.
Read the complete Near Neuville-sur-Saône write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
The route ends here after 833 km. Next is Back to Jura Wine.
16. Back to Jura Wine
The Dombes plateau, north-east of Lyon, is the strangest piece of farmland in France. Spread across it are some thousand-odd ponds, made by hand over the centuries, filled in winter, fished in autumn, and then planted with cereals in a rotation that has been going for hundreds of years. Medieval monks and landowners dug them to farm carp, and the system still works, which is why the horizon here is a patchwork of reed, water and sky, full of herons and migrating ducks.
Read the complete Jura Wine write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Back to Jura Wine closes the day.
Leg by leg
Fuel stop near Tignieu to Food stop in Ceyzériat
Fuel stop near Tignieu → Food stop in Ceyzériat is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Food stop in Ceyzériat to High point in Neuville-les-Dames
Food stop in Ceyzériat → High point in Neuville-les-Dames is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
High point in Neuville-les-Dames to Scenic stretch near Tarare
High point in Neuville-les-Dames → Scenic stretch near Tarare is 74 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Scenic stretch near Tarare to Near Boën-sur-Lignon, on the way back
Scenic stretch near Tarare → Near Boën-sur-Lignon, on the way back is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Photo stop near La Ricamarie to Neuville-sur-Saône
Photo stop near La Ricamarie → Neuville-sur-Saône is 88 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Back to Vanoise Gateway to Fuel stop near Montluel
Back to Vanoise Gateway → Fuel stop near Montluel is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fuel stop near Montluel to Food stop near Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne
Fuel stop near Montluel → Food stop near Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Food stop near Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne to High point near Belleville
Food stop near Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne → High point near Belleville is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
High point near Belleville to Scenic stretch near Aveize
High point near Belleville → Scenic stretch near Aveize is 73 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Scenic stretch near Aveize to Near Sury-le-Comtal, on the way back
Scenic stretch near Aveize → Near Sury-le-Comtal, on the way back is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Photo stop near Le Péage-de-Roussillon to Near Neuville-sur-Saône
Photo stop near Le Péage-de-Roussillon → Near Neuville-sur-Saône is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
More motorcycle rides nearby
- Vanoise Gateway Overnight · 486 km
- Route Napoléon Weekend + Vercors Balcony Roads · 990 km
- Chartreuse Forest Passes · short arc · 496 km
- Jura Wine Roads and Cascades · 380 km