Paris · Vexin Limestone and Seine Cliffs
A 154 km loop from Auvers-sur-Oise
Open this ride in the planner →
Why this ride
River views, limestone villages and a proper north-west escape. 154 km round from Auvers-sur-Oise - plan on about 2 h 39 of riding. The stops in between: Vétheuil river, La Roche-Guyon cliffs and Magny-en-Vexin window. It keeps to quiet secondary roads.
Roadbook
- Auvers-sur-Oise art stop
sight · 70 m
Vincent van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise in May 1890, and he was dead by the end of July. In those ten weeks, he painted about seventy canvases, among them the dark, restless wheat fields, the crooked village church and the portrait of his doctor, Paul Gachet. He died on 29 July 1890 of a gunshot wound, and he is buried in the small cemetery on the hill, next to his brother Theo, with a bed of ivy over both graves. The room he rented above the Ravoux inn, number five, is preserved almost empty, which makes it more affecting than any display.
The village on the Oise had drawn painters long before him. Charles-François Daubigny settled here in the 1860s and painted from a floating studio on the river, and Pissarro, Cézanne and Berthe Morisot all worked in the area. The light is soft and silvery, with the river and the open sky, and the village still feels like a country town with old stone houses and quiet lanes. Paths lead up to the wheat fields on the plateau, where a stone marks the place thought to have inspired his last paintings, and the view over the valley rewards the short climb.
For a rider, Auvers is easy to reach and pleasant to leave. The roads along the Oise and across the Vexin plateau are smooth and quiet, with gentle bends, old stone walls and villages with church spires. Weekends see cyclists and visitors, so slow down in the village, where the streets are narrow and parking is tight. Fuel is available in Méry-sur-Oise next door, which has about nine and a half thousand people, as well as stations on the main road, and the village has a few cafés and a bakery.
Visit early or late, since the main sights, such as the Ravoux inn and the church, are most crowded at midday, and check opening times, as some sites close for lunch and on certain days. In autumn, the fields are ploughed brown, the sky turns heavy and grey, and the wheat of the paintings feels very far away. Even so, it is easy to understand why a painter felt something here.
- Vétheuil river sweep
scenic · 40 m
The Seine below Vétheuil is a river in no hurry. It swings in long, lazy loops between chalk cliffs and poplar-lined banks, the water slow and green, and the road that follows it, the D913 on the north side, is one of the best easy rides in the Île-de-France. The Vexin plateau rises on one side, topped with fields and woodland, and the river flows below, with islands, barges and the occasional pleasure boat.
The chalk is the story. Over millions of years, the Seine has cut through the Cretaceous chalk, leaving white cliffs that glow in the sun, and in places the rock is riddled with caves. At Haute-Isle, a village a few kilometres downstream, people lived in houses dug into the cliff until recent times, and some are still used, their chimneys poking out of the rock face. At La Roche-Guyon, a little further, a castle with a medieval keep carved into the cliff and a later house at its foot stands above the road. In 1944, Field Marshal Rommel made it his headquarters, during the defence of Normandy, and the underground passages that served his staff are still there.
Behind these cliffs, the villages of the Vexin, Freneuse and Gasny, have a quiet, rural air, with stone houses, churches and fields of wheat and rapeseed. The Vexin français regional park protects the plateau, and cyclists and walkers are a common sight on the riverside lanes. Limay, across from Mantes, is the nearest sizeable town, with about eighteen and a half thousand people.
The riding along the river is a series of easy curves, with the cliffs on one side and the water on the other, and a surface that is generally good. In the evening, the cliffs glow gold and the river turns to silver, and it is the best time to go. Mist on cold mornings can linger on the water, and the road under the cliffs is damp and sometimes slippery. Be careful of falling stones in winter, when frost splits the chalk, and watch for cyclists on summer weekends.
Fuel and shops are in Limay and Mantes, so fill up there before heading along the river. The smell of river water, damp stone and wild garlic in spring is pleasant company, and the whole stretch is a calm, quiet end to a day.
- La Roche-Guyon cliffs
photo · 30 m
The Seine does something unusual below Mantes: it stops running in straight lines and starts to loop, and at La Roche-Guyon it presses right up against a wall of white chalk. The cliff is the whole point of the stop. It rises behind the village in pale, stained tiers, with houses and garages tucked into its foot, and some of those rooms are caves rather than rooms, cut straight back into the rock. At about thirty metres above sea level you are on the river's own floor, and the cliff makes it feel like the bottom of a bowl.
The riding here is gentle and rewards a slow pace. The riverside road follows the bend with long, easy curves, plane trees and poplars on one side, rock on the other, and the odd barge sliding past at walking speed. Traffic thickens on fine Sundays because Parisians come out for exactly this view, so an early start gives you the village almost to yourself. The surface is decent chalk-country tarmac, but after rain the cliff drips onto the lane in places, so respect the shaded sections.
The château is what turns this from a pretty bend into a story. A medieval keep climbs the cliff behind the village, reached by a stair cut into the rock, while the later house sits below it, partly built into the cave dwellings. In 1944 the German commander Erwin Rommel made his headquarters in the château during the build-up to the Normandy landings, which gives the quiet streets an odd weight. The village is listed among the most beautiful in France, which is fair, and also small enough that you will see all of it in half an hour.
Gasny and Freneuse are a few kilometres away and are small towns, so check the tank before you commit; Mantes-la-Jolie, about twelve kilometres off, has everything. Claude Monet's gardens at Giverny are not far upriver, so on a summer weekend this whole stretch carries coaches and cyclists, and patience on the narrow bends is part of the deal.
- Magny-en-Vexin food window
food · 80 m
Magny-en-Vexin sits where the Vexin plateau tips toward the Epte valley, on a patch of limestone farmland that nobody outside the Paris region thinks about much. That is its charm. The Vexin is a wide, open country of wheat and rapeseed fields, small stone villages and church spires that show up a long way off, and Magny is its market town: a sensible, well-kept place of about five and a half thousand people, with the sort of high street where the baker and the butcher still know each other's business.
As a food stop it does the job without fuss. You will find a boulangerie within a minute of the centre, a few cafés and brasseries with tables out when the weather allows, and a bench or two if you prefer to eat your sandwich in the sun. Lunch in France keeps hours, so try to arrive before one o'clock, or be ready to settle for a baguette and a pastry until the kitchens reopen. Being a real town, it also has fuel, which is the reason to note it on a day that otherwise runs through villages with none.
The roads around here are some of the most relaxed you can find within an hour of Paris. The fields are big and the visibility good, so the lanes between villages are fast and open, with long straights broken by gentle bends and the occasional dip into a wooded valley. In summer the crops stand high at the verges and in spring the rapeseed floods the horizon yellow. The wind can be steady across the plateau, since there is little to stop it, so a tank bag and a tucked-in elbow help.
The Vexin français is a regional nature park, and it is worth knowing that the villages here were built from the local pale stone, which glows in low evening light. Keep an eye out for old washhouses, lime-washed barns and the occasional château behind a wall. Chars and Vigny are the next small settlements on the map if you want somewhere quieter, but for a proper stop with a counter and a till, Magny is the one.
- Back to Auvers-sur-Oise
finish · 70 m
Few villages have as much weight on their shoulders as Auvers-sur-Oise. Vincent van Gogh came here in May 1890, lodged in a small room above an inn, and in the seventy days he stayed painted around seventy canvases, among them the church, the wheat fields and the town hall bedecked with flags, before he died of a gunshot wound in July. He and his brother Theo lie side by side in the little cemetery above the fields, under a blanket of ivy. The room he rented at the Auberge Ravoux is preserved almost bare, and it is more moving for being so small.
He was not alone in loving this valley. Daubigny settled here before him and painted from a floating studio on the Oise, and Pissarro, Cézanne and Corot all worked in and around the village. At roughly seventy metres above sea level, the Oise here runs wide and slow between poplars, with low chalk hills behind, and you can understand why painters liked the light. The village has about seven thousand people, enough for a couple of bakeries, restaurants and cafés, which in season fill with day trippers who come to follow the painter's footsteps.
For a rider it is a food stop, and a good one if you arrive before the coach parties or after they leave. The roads in are pleasant, running along the river and climbing a short way to the plateau, with bends that call for attention rather than speed. Traffic can be heavy at weekends in summer, with cars searching for parking, and the lanes around the church are narrow and cobbled in places. Leave the bike on the edge and walk up.
Climb to the church and the cemetery behind it, and the wheat fields that Van Gogh painted stretch out beyond the wall. In June they are green and gold, and the crows that wheel above them are a quiet allusion to his last great painting. Take an hour if you can. The village sells postcards and prints, but the best souvenir is the view from the top of the hill, with the valley and a distant line of trees on a clear afternoon.