Compiègne Forest and Pierrefonds
A 204 km loop
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Why this ride
Built for flow, views and useful stops rather than navigation busywork. A 204 km loop that starts and ends near Paris, about 3 h 42 of riding. It goes by way of Compiègne and Pierrefonds.
Roadbook
- Paris
start
It is a gift from the ruler of Egypt, about three thousand years old, and it was set up here in 1836 on the spot where the guillotine stood during the Revolution. Louis XVI was executed on this square in 1793, and so, in the Terror that followed, were over a thousand others. Now the square is a roundabout with fountains, ringed by traffic and framed by the Tuileries gardens on one side and the Madeleine church on the other. The banks of the Seine in this part of the city are UNESCO listed.
The honest advice for a rider is to treat Paris as a city to park in. The Périphérique ring road is fast, dense and unforgiving, and central Paris is a web of one-way streets, bus lanes, cobbles and tram lines. Paris also has a low-emission zone, so find out if your bike needs the Crit'Air sticker before you ride in, and look up the latest rules on parking. Motorcycle bays are common at the edges of the centre, and a garage near a metro line is the sanest option. Petrol stations are rare in the middle of the city, so fill up on the outskirts, in Levallois-Perret or Clichy, which are only a few kilometres away.
On foot, the area is easy. You can walk the Tuileries to the Louvre, cross the Pont de la Concorde to the Assemblée nationale, or head up the Rue Royale to the Madeleine and the smart shops of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The Champs-Élysées begins at the square's northwest corner and runs gently uphill to the Arc de Triomphe. Early morning, before the coaches arrive, gives you the best light on the stone and the fewest crowds.
If you want a break, take a coffee at a pavement cafe and watch the traffic rotate around the obelisk. Spring and autumn are the best seasons, with soft light and fewer tourists. The metro station at Concorde is a good way to move around if the bike stays in the garage.
- Compiègne
sight
On 11 November 1918, in a railway carriage parked in a clearing in the forest outside Compiègne, the armistice that ended the fighting of the First World War was signed. In June 1940 Hitler insisted that France's surrender be signed in the same carriage, at the same spot. The clearing, now called the Glade of the Armistice near Rethondes, holds a memorial and a replica carriage, and it is one of the places in northern France where history feels uncomfortably close.
The town itself sits at the meeting of the Oise and the Aisne, and its centrepiece is the royal palace, rebuilt for Louis XV and later a favourite residence of Napoleon I and Napoleon III. It is a vast, formal building facing a long park, and inside there is a national museum of cars and carriages, which makes a pleasing change from tapestries if you have a mechanical bent. Compiègne also has a darker medieval footnote: Joan of Arc was captured here in 1430 during a sortie against the Burgundians. Her statue stands in the town, and the old streets around the Gothic town hall are good for a wander.
For riders, though, the forest is the main event. The Forêt de Compiègne is one of the largest forests in France, laid out for royal hunting, and its roads reflect that: long straight avenues between beeches and oaks, meeting at star-shaped junctions where several routes radiate out at once. It is not twisty, but it is beautiful, especially in autumn when the beech leaves turn copper and the light comes down in shafts through the canopy. Watch for deer at dawn and dusk, horse riders on the verges and cyclists on weekends, and keep the speed civil.
Compiègne is big enough for everything you need: fuel, cafés, brasseries and bakeries. From here the ride east through the forest to Pierrefonds is short and very pretty, and the roads north into the Oise valley are calm. Expect speed cameras on the approach roads, as in much of France, and on rainy days take care with the cobbled streets in the old centre and slick leaves on the forest roads.
- Pierrefonds
food
Pierrefonds looks like a fairy-tale castle because, to a large extent, it is one. The original fortress was built at the end of the fourteenth century by Louis d'Orléans, brother of King Charles VI, and was dismantled in the seventeenth century when the crown was taming the great nobles. For two centuries it stood as a romantic ruin above the village. Then Napoleon III, who loved the nearby palace of Compiègne, commissioned the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to rebuild it, and Viollet-le-Duc did so with more imagination than strict archaeology: towers, battlements, carved beasts, painted halls. Film crews have used it for medieval stories ever since.
The village beneath it is small and charming, with a lake at its foot where the castle reflects on still mornings. A handful of crêperies, cafés and restaurants serve the visitors, and on a sunny day eating outside with the towers above you is a fine way to spend an hour. If you want to see inside the castle, allow time; it is managed as a national monument and the visit is worth it for the sheer theatre of the rooms.
The ride in from Compiègne crosses the eastern side of the great forest, on roads that run straight between ranks of beech and then dip and curve as the land falls towards the Pierrefonds valley. It is easy, scenic riding rather than anything technical. Around the village, the roads wind more, climbing out of the valley through farmland and woods, and on a weekday you will meet very little traffic. Weekends bring day-trippers from Paris, cyclists and horse riders, so take the bends with a little reserve.
Pierrefonds has around two thousand inhabitants, so fuel is not something to count on here; Compiègne, about thirteen kilometres away, is the reliable option. The area is green and damp, with rich clay soils, and after rain the forest roads stay wet longer than you might expect under the trees. In spring and autumn the forest smells of moss and leaf mould, and the castle, catching the late sun, is one of the best photographs in the Île-de-France orbit.
- Paris finish