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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Prades it runs 340 km to Prades; allow about 5 h 52 of riding. It goes by way of L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis, Abric de la Vall d'Ingla, Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley and Château de Montségur. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses France, Spain and Andorra - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 46 km this is Ruta del Cares · N-260, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Villefranche-de-Conflent is a whole town inside a wall. Squeezed into the narrow valley of the Têt where it meets a side stream, it was founded in the eleventh century as a stronghold of the Counts of Cerdanya, and after the Treaty of the Pyrenees turned this area French in 1659 it was refortified by Vauban to hold the valley against Spain. The ramparts that give the place its label, l'enceinte, are part of the UNESCO listing of Vauban's fortifications, and you can walk along the covered galleries inside the walls. High above the town on the mountainside sits Fort Liberia, linked to the village by a long underground stairway.
Read the complete L’enceinte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
L’enceinte 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 30 km into the recorded legs. Next is Abric de la Vall d'Ingla.
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.
about 76 km into the recorded legs you reach Abric de la Vall d'Ingla. 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.
Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley, about halfway. Next is Château de Montségur.
The castle of Montségur sits on a steep limestone peak, the pog, at about twelve hundred metres above the valleys of the Ariège, and even from the road below it looks impossible. In the thirteenth century it was the last great refuge of the Cathars, the dualist Christians condemned as heretics by the Church and crushed by the Albigensian Crusade. In 1243 a royal army laid siege to the summit, and after ten months the defenders surrendered in March 1244. Those who refused to renounce their faith, more than two hundred people, were burned at the foot of the mountain, in a place still called the Field of the Burned. A simple stone memorial stands there today.
Read the complete Château de Montségur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Château de Montségur sits at 170 km, about halfway. Next is back through Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley comes up about 234 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through 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.
about 266 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Abric de la Vall d'Ingla. 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 L’enceinte.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete L’enceinte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 340 km.
L’enceinte → L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis → Abric de la Vall d'Ingla is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Abric de la Vall d'Ingla → Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley → Château de Montségur is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château de Montségur → back through Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley → back through Abric de la Vall d'Ingla is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Abric de la Vall d'Ingla → back through L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis → L’enceinte is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.