CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
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.
Green hills close to the city, enough corners to matter. A 139 km loop that starts and ends near Courzieu, about 3 h 00 of riding. On the way it passes Sainte-Croix-en-Jarez and Pilat. Col de la République is the high point. It is a high-mountain day.
Lyonnais like to escape to the hills on Sundays, and the Yzeron valley is one of their favourite exits. It lies to the west of the city, in the Monts du Lyonnais, a range of rounded, wooded hills that reach about nine hundred metres at their highest, and the roads here, little more than lanes, climb out of the suburbs into a landscape of meadows, chestnuts and old stone farms. The village of Yzeron gives its name to the stream and the valley, and it has been a weekend retreat for generations.
Read the complete Yzeron ridge roads write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yzeron ridge roads sits at 0 km, early in the day. Next is Sainte-Croix-en-Jarez.
Sainte-Croix-en-Jarez is a village inside a monastery, which is a sentence that does not make sense until you see it. Béatrix de Roussillon founded a Carthusian charterhouse here in 1280, in a hollow of the Pilat hills, and for five centuries, monks lived in solitary cells around a cloister, as the Carthusians do. When the Revolution dispersed the community, the buildings were sold, and the villagers moved into the monks' cells and the service buildings, so today ordinary houses, a bakery and a café share the old walls, and the village's streets follow the cloister. The church, the chapter house and the great gate are still there, and some of the cells are open to visitors.
Read the complete Sainte-Croix-en-Jarez write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sainte-Croix-en-Jarez comes up about 40 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pilat viewpoint.
The Pilat is the last high ground before the Rhône, a rounded massif of granite and forest that rises abruptly from the river valley to its highest point, the Crêt de la Perdrix, at about fourteen hundred metres. It is a regional nature park, a place of beech and fir woods, heather moors and open pastures, and it feels more remote than its position, between Lyon and Saint-Étienne, would suggest.
Read the complete Pilat viewpoint write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 61 km into the recorded legs you reach Pilat viewpoint. Next is Col de la République.
The Col de la République is a pass with a political name and an unexpected role in cycling history. At about eleven hundred and forty-five metres, it carries the old main road from Saint-Étienne to Annonay across the Pilat massif, and it has been climbed by the Tour de France more than once, while the steady grade through the beechwoods has made it a training favourite for local clubs. The pass lies in the Parc naturel régional du Pilat, between the industrial valley of Saint-Étienne and the Rhône basin.
Read the complete Col de la République write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The high point of this section. Next is Back to Yzeron.
Yzeron sits on a hillside high in the Monts du Lyonnais, a village of stone houses and a church spire among pasture and spruce woods, with views over the folded hills toward Lyon. It is a cooler, quieter place than the city, which is only about twenty-five kilometres away. In summer, people from Lyon drive up to escape the heat, and in winter a dusting of snow sometimes falls on the high ground, giving the villages an Alpine air. The landscape is made of rounded ridges and wooded gorges, cut by little rivers like the Yzeron itself, which runs down toward the city through a long green valley.
Read the complete Yzeron write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to Yzeron. That is the ride.
This Sainte-Croix-en-Jarez → Pilat viewpoint stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.
Pilat viewpoint → Col de la République is the reward section in Lyon. Look through the bends, use legal pull-offs for photos and keep a little margin for tractors, cyclists and damp shade. The best ride here is smooth, not noisy.
This Col de la République → Back to Yzeron stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.