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 210 km round trip from Pessac - roughly 4 h 38 in the saddle. The stops in between: La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B, Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion and back through La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B. The line favours views over speed.
Pessac is better known for wine than for modern architecture, so it is a surprise to find a small colony of Le Corbusier houses in its southern suburbs. In 1924, the industrialist Henry Frugès, a sugar and timber magnate with a social conscience, commissioned the young architect to build cheap, comfortable homes for his workers, and Le Corbusier designed rows of cubic houses with flat roofs, long ribbon windows and bright colours, inside and out. It was one of his first large housing experiments, an attempt to apply factory methods to building, and it took a few years to finish. The result was a village of around fifty houses.
Read the complete Cité Frugès write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Frugès is where the day begins. Next is La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B.
The Gironde estuary is wide enough here to feel like an inland sea, and Vauban saw it as the gateway to Bordeaux that needed a lock. His answer, at the end of the seventeenth century, was a triangle of fortifications: the citadel at Blaye on the right bank, Fort Médoc on the left bank at Cussac, and between them Fort Paté, a squat stone tower built on an island in the middle of the river. Together they could cross their fire over the shipping channel, and today they share a place on the UNESCO list of Vauban's works. The citadel of Blaye is the most impressive of the three, a fortified town in its own right, with ramparts, gates and old barracks set high on a bluff above the water.
Read the complete La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B comes up about 50 km into the recorded legs. Next is Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion.
Saint-Émilion is a wine village that looks like a stage set, with steep, cobbled lanes tumbling down a limestone hillside, golden stone houses, and a bell tower rising above the rooftops. The UNESCO listing covers not just the village but its whole jurisdiction, eight parishes of vineyards around it, recognising a landscape in which vines have been cultivated since Roman times. The village grew around the hermitage of Émilion, a Breton monk who lived in a cave here in the eighth century, and its most remarkable monument is the monolithic church, carved out of the rock beneath the bell tower.
Read the complete Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 105 km into the recorded legs you reach Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion. Next is back through La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B, late in the day. Next is Cité Frugès.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Frugès write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cité Frugès. That is the ride.
Cité Frugès → La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B → Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion → back through La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B → Cité Frugès is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.