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.
A 475 km round trip from Bellver de Cerdanya - roughly 8 h 44 in the saddle. It goes by way of L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis, Château de Puilaurens, Château de Quéribus and Château et remparts de Carcassonne. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Spain into France - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 44 km this is Ruta del Cares · N-260, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The Cerdanya is a high, wide, sunny valley in the eastern Pyrenees, shared between Catalonia and France, and its southern wall is the long limestone barrier of the Serra del Cadí. The Vall d'Ingla cuts into that wall just above Bellver de Cerdanya and the neighbouring village of Éller, and the rock shelter there is one of the archaeological traces of people who used these valleys long before towns and borders. You are inside the Cadí-Moixeró Natural Park, a protected area of pine forest, cliffs and high pasture.
Read the complete Abric de la Vall d'Ingla write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Abric de la Vall d'Ingla is where the day begins. Next is L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis.
At around sixteen hundred metres, Mont-Louis is often described as the highest fortified town in France, and it feels like a frontier outpost even today. Vauban designed it in 1679 to guard the newly drawn border after the Treaty of the Pyrenees, placing it on a strategic shelf at the meeting of three valleys: the Têt dropping towards Perpignan, the Aude running north, and the wide basin of the Cerdanya opening to the west. The citadel is still used by the French army, home to a commando training centre, so parts of it are closed to visitors, but the walls and the small grid of streets inside them are free to wander.
Read the complete L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis comes up about 44 km into the recorded legs. Next is Château de Puilaurens.
Perched on a rocky spur above a forest of firs and beeches, at around seven hundred metres, the castle of Puilaurens looks like something drawn by a child who loves castles: battlements, towers, walls following every edge of the rock. It is one of the so-called Cathar castles of the Languedoc, a group of fortresses linked to the crusade launched against the Cathar heretics in the thirteenth century. After the region came under French control, the castle was rebuilt as a royal fortress guarding the frontier with the Kingdom of Aragon, which lay just to the south until the seventeenth century. The climb up from the car park is steep but short, and the views from the top over the Fenouillèdes and the Pyrenean foothills are superb.
Read the complete Château de Puilaurens write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 110 km into the recorded legs you reach Château de Puilaurens. Next is Château de Quéribus.
Quéribus clings to the top of a limestone pinnacle like a crown, so improbably perched that it is hard to believe people ever built it, let alone held it under siege. It is often described as the last Cathar stronghold: when Montségur fell in 1244, the remaining Cathar refugees and their supporters found shelter here, and the castle held out until 1255, when it finally surrendered to the forces of the French king. It then became a royal fortress guarding the border with Aragon, until the frontier moved south in 1659 and its usefulness ended.
Read the complete Château de Quéribus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Château de Quéribus, about halfway. Next is Château et remparts de Carcassonne.
Carcassonne has two faces. Down by the river Aude sits the ordinary lower town, a grid of streets laid out in the thirteenth century around a market square, and on the hill above rises the Cité, a double ring of walls and fifty-odd towers that looks like the illustration to a children's book about knights. The Cité was inscribed by UNESCO in 1997, and it is one of the most visited monuments in France, with the nearest sizeable roads and everything a rider needs just a kilometre away in the modern town.
Read the complete Château et remparts de Carcassonne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Château et remparts de Carcassonne sits at 193 km, about halfway. Next is back through Château de Quéribus.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Château de Quéribus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Château de Quéribus comes up about 330 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Château de Puilaurens.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Château de Puilaurens write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 365 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Château de Puilaurens. Next is back through L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis, late in the day. Next is Abric de la Vall d'Ingla.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abric de la Vall d'Ingla write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 475 km.
Abric de la Vall d'Ingla → L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis → Château de Puilaurens is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château de Puilaurens → Château de Quéribus is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château de Quéribus → Château et remparts de Carcassonne is 94 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château et remparts de Carcassonne → back through Château de Quéribus is 92 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Château de Quéribus → back through Château de Puilaurens is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Château de Puilaurens → back through L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis → Abric de la Vall d'Ingla is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.