CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. 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.
From Voiron it runs 830 km to Saint-Savin; allow about 12 h 54 of riding. On the way it passes Pont-en-Royans village stop, Vassieux plateau meal and near Saint-Savin. The climbs: Combe Laval balcony road and near Hauterives. It tops out at about 900 m. The passes are the reason to go.
Voiron sits where the Isère valley meets the foothills of the Chartreuse, a manufacturing town of twenty-two thousand people about twenty-five kilometres north-west of Grenoble, and it makes things that matter to riders and to anyone who likes a drink. The monks of the Grande Chartreuse monastery, hidden in the mountains above, have made their herbal liqueur since the eighteenth century, and the cellars where it is aged and bottled are in Voiron, said to be the longest liqueur cellar in the world. The town is also where the Rossignol ski company began in 1907, a reminder that these valleys feed the Alps with both hardware and thirst.
Read the complete Voiron fuel gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Voiron is where the day begins. Next is Pont-en-Royans village stop.
Pont-en-Royans is one of the odd, brilliant sights of the Vercors: a row of old houses hanging out over the river Bourne on wooden balconies, supported by nothing but stone and optimism. The village sits where the gorge opens a little, with cliffs above, the water running green and fast beneath, and a stone bridge crossing the stream. The coloured houses, red, ochre and yellow, lean out from the rock face, and in the morning, when the sun lights the façades, they seem to float. It is a village of barely a thousand people, but it is one of the most photographed in the Alps.
Read the complete Pont-en-Royans village stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pont-en-Royans village stop comes up about 56 km into the recorded legs. Next is Combe Laval balcony road.
The Combe Laval road is a ledge cut into a cliff, and it feels like it. The D76 leaves Saint-Jean-en-Royans and climbs into a deep, narrow valley on the western edge of the Vercors, a great gash in the limestone with walls hundreds of metres high, and then runs along the side of the cliff on a shelf blasted out of the rock. It was built over a long period, beginning in the late nineteenth century, to bring timber down from the forest of Lente on the plateau above, and the tunnels and rock overhangs are the marks of that labour.
Read the complete Combe Laval balcony road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 76 km into the recorded legs you reach Combe Laval balcony road. Next is Vassieux plateau meal.
Vassieux is a village that was wiped out in a matter of days in the summer of 1944. In July 1944, in the weeks after D-Day, German troops attacked the Vercors, where thousands of Resistance fighters had gathered in the mountain fortress, and gliders landed on the Vassieux plateau, carrying soldiers who overran the defences. The village was burned, its people killed, and the Resistance was crushed. Today Vassieux holds a memorial and a museum, and has been honoured as a Compagnon de la Libération, one of the few communities to receive the title.
Read the complete Vassieux plateau meal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Somewhere to get off the bike, about 102 km into the recorded legs. Next is Back to Voiron.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Voiron fuel gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Back to Voiron. That is the ride. Next is Ardèche Gorge Long Day.
Saint-Savin is a village in the hills just north of Bourgoin-Jallieu, in the part of Nord-Isère where the land starts to fold up towards the Isle Crémieu and the Rhône. It is quiet, green country: hedges and walnut trees, ponds in the hollows, stone farmhouses, and narrow roads that seem to have been laid down by following the cows.
Read the complete Fuel stop near Saint-Savin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ardèche Gorge Long Day is the fuel stop for this leg. Next is Lyon / Rhône-Alpes rides return.
The Bresse is flat, green and fiercely proud of its chickens. This stop lies deep in it, between Varennes-Saint-Sauveur and Saint-Trivier-de-Courtes, close to the line where Saône-et-Loire meets the Ain. The landscape is a quilt of small fields, hedges, damp meadows and woods, crossed by slow rivers that drain north towards the Seille and the Saône.
Read the complete Near Varennes-Saint-Sauveur, on the way back write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 365 km into the recorded legs you reach Lyon / Rhône-Alpes rides return. Next is Food stop near Cluny.
For about two centuries, the largest church in Christendom stood in this small Burgundian town. The abbey of Cluny, founded in 910, grew into the head of a vast network of monasteries across Europe, and its third church, begun at the end of the eleventh century, was longer than any other until St Peter's in Rome was rebuilt. Popes came from its ranks, kings sought its blessing. Then came the Revolution: the abbey was dissolved, sold, and used for decades as a stone quarry. What remains is a fragment, a single soaring arm of the transept with its octagonal bell tower, and the empty space around it is almost more eloquent than the building would have been.
Read the complete Cluny write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Somewhere to get off the bike, about 418 km into the recorded legs. Next is Photo stop near Montbrison.
Montbrison was for centuries the capital of the Forez, the old county that occupies the upper Loire basin west of Lyon, and the town still carries itself with a certain dignity. Its great Gothic church, the Collégiale Notre-Dame-d'Espérance, rises above the rooftops, and just beside it stands La Diana, a medieval hall whose wooden vaulted ceiling is painted with hundreds of coats of arms of the noble families of the region. Few rooms in France give you such a direct sense of medieval heraldry.
Read the complete Photo stop near Montbrison write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Photo stop near Montbrison sits at 583 km, about halfway. Next is Ardèche Gorge Long Day checkpoint 8.
In 1362, on the slopes above Brignais, a royal army sent to clear out bands of unemployed mercenaries, the Tard-Venus, who were ravaging the Lyon area during a lull in the Hundred Years' War, was soundly defeated by them. It was an embarrassing moment for the French crown, and the mercenaries went on plundering the region for some time afterwards. Today there is little trace of the battle, and Brignais is a busy town of some twelve thousand people on the south-western edge of Lyon, in the valley of the Garon.
Read the complete Brignais write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ardèche Gorge Long Day checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is Scenic stretch near Le Péage-de-Roussillon.
The Rhône corridor south of Vienne is one of the busiest transport arteries in Europe, with the river, the A7 motorway, the railway and the N7 all squeezed into the valley, and Le Péage-de-Roussillon sits right in the middle of it. The town grew up as a toll station on the old road, hence the name, and in the twentieth century it became home to a large chemical platform whose chimneys and pipework still dominate the riverbank.
Read the complete Scenic stretch near Le Péage-de-Roussillon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 716 km into the recorded legs you reach Scenic stretch near Le Péage-de-Roussillon. Next is High point near Hauterives.
In 1879 a country postman named Ferdinand Cheval tripped over an oddly shaped stone on his delivery round near Hauterives. He picked it up, took it home, and spent the next thirty-three years building a palace out of stones he collected on his rounds, carrying them in his pockets, then in baskets, then in a wheelbarrow. The result, the Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval, is one of the strangest and most moving buildings in France, a fantastical mass of towers, grottoes, animals and inscriptions, admired by the Surrealists and now a protected monument.
Read the complete High point near Hauterives write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Back to Ardèche Gorge.
The Ardèche Gorge, with its limestone cliffs and the great natural arch of the Pont d'Arc, lies about two hundred kilometres to the south, and the place on the map is somewhere far less dramatic: the flat, farmed country of the Nord-Isère, east of Lyon, around L'Isle-d'Abeau. This is a landscape of fields, ponds, low hills and small towns, in the old province of the Dauphiné. L'Isle-d'Abeau itself is a new town, planned in the 1970s to relieve pressure on Lyon, with housing estates, shopping centres and a business park, while the older villages of Saint-Savin, Trept and Salagnon retain their churches and farms.
Read the complete Ardèche Gorge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back to Ardèche Gorge closes the day.
Voiron fuel gate → Pont-en-Royans village stop is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pont-en-Royans village stop → Combe Laval balcony road is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Combe Laval balcony road → Vassieux plateau meal is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vassieux plateau meal → Back to Voiron is 88 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Back to Voiron → Fuel stop near Saint-Savin is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fuel stop near Saint-Savin → Near Varennes-Saint-Sauveur, on the way back is 116 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Food stop near Cluny → Photo stop near Montbrison is 179 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Photo stop near Montbrison → Brignais is 67 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Scenic stretch near Le Péage-de-Roussillon → High point near Hauterives is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
High point near Hauterives → Back to Ardèche Gorge is 91 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.