Why this ride
A proper escape from Paris with roads worth waking up for. 184 km round from Paris - plan on about 2 h 43 of riding. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Provins Medieval Ridge Loop
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 184 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 2 h 43
- Journey
- Loop
Distance and timing basis
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.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Paris
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.
2. Provins
Provins rises out of the wheat fields of the Brie like something from a film set, and the odd thing is that it is almost entirely real. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries this was one of the four great fair towns of the counts of Champagne, where merchants from Flanders, Italy and beyond met to trade cloth, spices and money. When the fairs declined, Provins simply stopped growing, and so its ramparts, its gates and its medieval upper town survived the centuries more or less intact. UNESCO listed it in 2001 as a rare surviving example of a medieval fair town.
3. Paris
Return visit. Read the place description above.