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 442 km round trip from Carcassonne - roughly 8 h 10 in the saddle. It goes by way of Château de Puilaurens, Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley and back through Château de Puilaurens. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from France into Andorra - carry ID and check the toll rules. It follows river valleys.
Carcassonne is the fortress that every child draws when asked for a castle: a double ring of walls with about fifty towers, pointed slate roofs, a drawbridge and a keep, rising from a hilltop above the river Aude. The medieval city, known as La Cité, is the largest walled town in Europe still standing, and much of what you see was heavily restored in the nineteenth century by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, whose steep roofs on the towers are more northern French than local. The result is spectacular if debatable, and UNESCO listed the site in 1997.
Read the complete Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne is where the day begins. 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.
Château de Puilaurens comes up about 74 km into the recorded legs. Next is Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley.
Andorra is famous for shopping and ski lifts, which makes the Madriu-Perafita-Claror valley a surprise. A glacial valley that runs up into the mountains from the edge of the capital's built-up area, it is a landscape of granite peaks, lakes, pastures and stone shepherd huts, almost untouched by roads. UNESCO listed it in 2004 as a cultural landscape because it shows, in one place, how people have lived in the high Pyrenees for thousands of years, with pastoral farming, iron forges and mountain paths shaping the land together.
Read the complete Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 221 km into the recorded legs you reach Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley. 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.
back through Château de Puilaurens, late in the day. Next is Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne. That is the ride.
Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne → Château de Puilaurens is 74 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château de Puilaurens → Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley is 147 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley → back through Château de Puilaurens is 147 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Château de Puilaurens → Historic Fortified City of Carcassonne is 74 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.