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 225 km round trip from Boulogne-Billancourt - roughly 3 h 25 in the saddle. On the way it passes Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner, Chartres Cathedral and back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 89 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Le Corbusier lived at the top of this building for more than thirty years and, in the end, swam away from it for the last time. The block at the Porte Molitor, on the edge of Paris where the sixteenth arrondissement meets Boulogne-Billancourt, was designed in the early 1930s as a set of apartments, and the architect kept the two top floors for his own flat and studio. It has a glass-and-steel facade, an open plan and a curved roof, and it was one of the first buildings to show that the white geometric language of modernism could work in a Parisian street. UNESCO listed it in 2016 as part of his body of work, and the apartment can be visited on guided tours, so check the opening hours before turning up.
Read the complete Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor is where the day begins. Next is Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner.
On a gentle rise above the Seine at Poissy, set back from the road in a meadow ringed by trees, a white box floats on thin columns. Villa Savoye is perhaps the most famous house of the twentieth century, designed by Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret for a wealthy family as a weekend retreat and completed in 1931. It is the purest built expression of Le Corbusier's five points of a new architecture: pilotis, a free plan, a free façade, horizontal ribbon windows and a roof garden. Since 2016 it has been part of the World Heritage site of his architectural work, along with the small gardener's lodge at the entrance, a miniature echo of the main house.
Read the complete Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chartres Cathedral.
You see Chartres from miles away across the wheat. The Beauce is a vast, flat plain, one of the great granaries of France, and the cathedral rises out of it with two mismatched spires, like a ship on a green sea. After a fire in 1194 destroyed most of the earlier church, the townspeople rebuilt it in about thirty years, a remarkable pace for the time, and as a result the building has a unity that few Gothic cathedrals can claim. It was one of the first sites to be added to the UNESCO list, in 1979.
Read the complete Chartres Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 107 km into the recorded legs you reach Chartres Cathedral. Next is back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner, late in the day. Next is Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor. That is the ride.
Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor → Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner → Chartres Cathedral is 81 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Chartres Cathedral → back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner is 89 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner → Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.