Paris · Provins and Brie Backroads

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 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.

   Read the complete Paris write-up.

2. 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.

   Read the complete Provins write-up.

3. 3. Lorris

   Lorris is a small market town on the southern rim of the Forêt d'Orléans, the largest state forest in mainland France, and it is one of those places whose name carries more weight in history books than its size would suggest. Fewer than three thousand people live here, around a square with a fine old timber market hall and a church whose wooden organ loft is one of the treasures of the Loiret.

   Read the complete Lorris write-up.

4. 4. Chabris

   Chabris sits on the left bank of the Cher where three landscapes meet: the sandy woods and ponds of the Sologne to the north, the open chalky fields of the Berry to the south, and the soft valley of the river itself, wide and slow, lined with poplars. It is a village of around two and a half thousand people, the sort of place you pass through on the way to somewhere else, which is a pity, because it rewards half an hour.

   Read the complete Chabris write-up.

5. 5. Montmorillon

   The Gartempe runs right through the middle of Montmorillon, and the town has grown up on both its banks, linked by old bridges, with mills, gardens and steep lanes stepping down to the water. It is a small, quiet market town in the southeast of the Vienne department, surrounded by woods, pastures and the rolling country that leads toward the Limousin.

   Read the complete Montmorillon write-up.

6. 6. Brie

   Do not come here looking for cheese. This Brie is a small village in the Charente, just north of Angoulême, a long way from the famous cheese country east of Paris. It is a quiet place of limestone houses, a church and fields, set in the gentle hills that roll toward the Cognac vineyards to the west and the wooded uplands of the Limousin to the east.

   Read the complete Brie write-up.

7. 7. Chauvigny

   Five castles on one rocky spur is an unusual sight anywhere, and Chauvigny wears them well. The upper town stands on a limestone ridge above the Vienne river, east of Poitiers, with the ruins of medieval fortresses, a Romanesque church and narrow lanes packed onto the hilltop, while the lower town spreads along the river below. Approaching from the west, the skyline of towers and walls above the trees is a surprise.

   Read the complete Chauvigny write-up.

8. 8. Saint-Aignan

   Saint-Aignan rises from the south bank of the Cher in tiers: a stone bridge, a riverside quay, steep streets of white tufa houses, a Romanesque collegiate church, and above it all a Renaissance château on its rocky terrace. It is a small town in the southern Loire valley, surrounded by vineyards, woods and fields, and it has the soft, unhurried feel of the Touraine.

   Read the complete Saint-Aignan write-up.

9. 9. Chevilly

   Flat does not begin to describe the Beauce. North of Orléans the land opens into an enormous plain of wheat, barley and rapeseed, so level and so open that grain silos and church steeples stand out like lighthouses, and the sky takes up most of the view. Chevilly is a small village on that plain, beside the old road from Paris to Orléans, with a church, a few streets and an eighteenth-century château set in a park on the edge of the village.

   Read the complete Chevilly write-up.

10. 10. Paris

    Return visit. Read the place description above.

    Read the complete Paris write-up.