Paris · Fontainebleau and Loing Sweep
A 177 km loop from Fontainebleau forest
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Why this ride
Forest shade, sandstone and clean café logic. Out of Fontainebleau and back again: 177 km, roughly 3 h 03 in the saddle. On the way it passes Moret-sur-Loing, Nemours and Milly-la-Forêt. Back roads rather than main roads, where the map allows.
Roadbook
- Fontainebleau forest
scenic
The Forest of Fontainebleau is a strange and beautiful place, a woodland of oak, beech and pine growing on a bed of sandstone that has weathered into huge grey boulders, scattered across the hillsides like the playthings of giants. It covers some twenty-five thousand hectares south of Paris, and it was a royal hunting ground for centuries before it became a place of refuge for city dwellers, climbers and painters. UNESCO designated it a biosphere reserve in the late twentieth century, recognising its rare mix of habitats.
The sandstone is the thing. Over millions of years, wind and water have carved it into rounded blocks, ledges and overhangs, and in the forest these blocks have become the world's best-known bouldering ground, with climbers from every country working the problems marked with coloured arrows. The sand itself is pale and fine, and the heaths and gorges of Franchard have an almost desert feel in dry weather. The forest also has the Mare aux Fées, a pond named for the fairies said to bathe in it.
In the nineteenth century, painters of the Barbizon school, among them Rousseau and Millet, came to the village of Barbizon on the edge of the forest to paint nature directly, working outdoors and rejecting the studio tradition, and in doing so they helped pave the way for the Impressionists. The château of Fontainebleau, a vast palace beside the forest, was a favourite of François I and Napoleon, who said farewell to his Guard in its courtyard in 1814 before going into exile on Elba.
The riding here is a very mixed pleasure. The main roads through the forest are smooth and fast, with long avenues of tall trees and dappled light, but many smaller roads are narrow, patched and strewn with leaves and sand, and sudden bends hide in the shade. Speed limits are low and enforced, and some tracks are closed to motor vehicles. Weekends bring heavy traffic, with cyclists, climbers and walkers, so go on a weekday if you can. After rain the surface can be treacherous.
Fontainebleau, a town of nearly twenty thousand people, has fuel, restaurants and parking, and is the best place to stock up. The smell of the forest, resin and leaf mould, is intoxicating on a warm morning.
- Moret-sur-Loing
sight
Moret-sur-Loing is what an impressionist painter would have ordered if asked for a small medieval town. It sits on a quiet bend of the river Loing, where an old stone bridge with a mill arches over the water, and the whole composition, with a church tower, reflections and drifting willow, is the one that Alfred Sisley painted again and again after settling here in the 1880s. He is buried in the local cemetery. The town was fortified in the Middle Ages, and two great gates, the Porte de Samois and the Porte de Bourgogne, still stand at the ends of the main street, which runs between them past old houses and tiny courtyards.
It also has a sweet claim to fame. Moret's sugar of the Sisters, a hard, golden barley sugar sold in little twisted sticks, was invented by nuns here in the seventeenth century, and you can still buy it in the town, in tins, with an old-fashioned label. A few hundred metres away at Saint-Mammès, the Loing meets the Seine, and barges laden with grain, sand and containers pass through the locks, so the water stop there is full of working boats rather than pleasure craft.
The surrounding countryside is particularly pleasing. Moret sits on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, a huge royal hunting forest of oak and beech with sandstone boulders scattered through it, and the roads in and out are shady, with gentle bends and not much traffic during the week. The surface is generally good, though forestry lorries and cyclists share the lanes, and weekends are busier. Early morning, with mist on the river, is the best time. In spring the woods are fresh and green, and in autumn they turn copper.
For practicalities, a town with a few thousand inhabitants has bakeries, a supermarket and a couple of cafes beside the river, and the neighbouring Veneux-les-Sablons has fuel and bigger shops. There is a public tap and benches near the bridge, which makes it a convenient water stop. It is also a useful half-day escape from Paris, easily combined with a loop through the forest and the castle at Fontainebleau.
- Nemours lunch
food
Nemours lies on the Loing river, in the southern corner of Seine-et-Marne, where the landscape changes from the forests of Fontainebleau to the gentler farmland of the Gâtinais. It is a town of about fourteen thousand people, with a grey-stone centre, a canal beside the river and a medieval castle that still stands guard over the bridge. A good place for lunch, in other words, with enough to look at between courses.
The castle, built in the twelfth century and extended in the fifteenth, is a solid, square fortress with round corner towers, and it houses a museum on the prehistory of the Île-de-France, as well as exhibits about the history of the town. The surrounding area is rich in prehistoric remains, thanks to the rock shelters and caves in the sandstone ridges, and the museum explains how people have lived in the region for tens of thousands of years. The duchy of Nemours, once a royal title, gave its name to a series of notable French nobles.
The Canal du Loing runs through the town, a modest waterway used for centuries to carry goods toward Paris, now mostly frequented by pleasure boats and walkers on the towpath. A seat on a terrace by the canal in summer, with a plate of simple French cooking, is hard to beat. Expect good, uncomplicated fare: a plat du jour, a steak with chips, a goat cheese salad, a tarte aux pommes, and a carafe of house wine. The brasseries around the centre are generally open for lunch from noon until two, and a lot of them are closed on Monday.
The riding to Nemours from the north runs along quiet forest roads and then across open farmland, a good mix of shaded bends and straight sections. The surface is generally good, the traffic light, and the sandstone cliffs on the edge of town give a hint of the scenery in the forest. In autumn, the leaves along the roads can be slippery, especially after rain.
Fuel is easy in Nemours and neighbouring Saint-Pierre-lès-Nemours, both of which have stations and supermarkets, and the town is a convenient base for exploring the area. If you have time after lunch, take a walk along the canal and watch the boats pass through the lock.
- Milly-la-Forêt return
sight
Milly-la-Forêt is a small town of just under five thousand people tucked at the western edge of the Fontainebleau sandstone country, at about seventy-five metres above the sea. The town's name tells you what it is: a settlement in a clearing of old forest, with the Gâtinais regional park around it. Its centre is built around a large wooden market hall dating back to the fifteenth century, with a vast timbered roof held on massive oak posts, and in the shade of this structure traders still sell vegetables and cheese. It is one of the finest surviving halles in the Île-de-France, and few visitors know it.
Milly has a long association with herbs. For centuries the surrounding sandy soils have been used to grow medicinal and aromatic plants, the so-called simples, and a fragrant landscape of mint, lavender and chamomile fields is part of the area's identity. The little chapel of Saint-Blaise-des-Simples, a mile or so from the centre, was decorated inside by the poet and artist Jean Cocteau in the early 1960s, and he is buried in the grounds. If you step inside you find delicate line drawings of herbs and flowers and a quiet that feels out of step with the busy world.
On the bike, Milly is a good place to wake up the day. The roads out of the town head into pine and oak forest, with the soft smell of resin on warm days and the odd grey boulder poking out of the heather. Tarmac is mostly smooth, bends are long and gentle, and traffic is light on weekdays but picks up on weekends, when climbers and walkers head for the forest. Not far away in the woods stands the Cyclop, a giant mirrored sculpture by Jean Tinguely and friends, which will make you think you have lost your mind if you come across it by accident.
For coffee and a croissant, the cafés on the market square are the natural choice, and the bakeries around it open early. Fuel is available in the town, so it makes a good place to fill up before going on. Take a seat under the old roof timbers, order a coffee, and look up. It is the kind of ceiling that reminds you how much skill went into everyday buildings before anyone worried about speed.
- Back to Fontainebleau
finish
Fontainebleau is a royal town in a forest, and the combination is irresistible. The château grew over seven centuries from a medieval hunting lodge into a palace of great beauty, and François I turned it into a showpiece of the Renaissance, importing Italian artists to decorate its galleries. Napoleon was fond of it, too, and it was in the horseshoe staircase courtyard that he said farewell to his Old Guard in April 1814, before leaving for exile on Elba. The courtyard is called the Cour des Adieux, and visitors still stand on those steps for photos.
The forest surrounding the town is enormous, more than twenty thousand hectares of oak, beech and pine, with great grey sandstone boulders scattered through the trees like toys left by a giant. Climbers love it, and a local style of bouldering began here, so you will see people with crash pads and chalk-white hands. In the nineteenth century, painters lived in the village of Barbizon, on the edge of the forest, and worked outdoors, a precursor to the Impressionists. The ride's backroads through the Brie countryside and the coffee stop at Meaux set up a day of gentle riding in the cheese country east of Paris, so arriving at Fontainebleau at the end gives a fine finish.
For a rider, Fontainebleau is a good, easy place to rest. The town has nearly twenty thousand people, and Avon next door has more, so fuel, food and coffee are all easy, with bakeries open from early in the morning. Roads in the forest are smooth and gently curving, with big trees on both sides, but in places they are narrow, and the speed limits are low. Cyclists and walkers are everywhere on weekends, and deer and wild boar can cross at dusk. Leaves can lie thick on the road in autumn and make the bends slippery, so take it slowly.
The town centre fills with visitors in summer and the palace queues are long, but the forest is big enough to absorb everyone. Walk along a sandy track among the boulders for a few minutes, and you will see why the kings chose to hunt here, and why they never left.