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.
252 km from Besançon to Besançon, about 4 h 46 of riding. On the way it passes Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans, From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai, Lac de Chalain and Saline de Salins-les-Bains. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 41 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Besancon sits in a tight loop of the Doubs river, almost an island, and above the loop a great rock rises more than a hundred metres. On top of it stands the Citadel, the fortress that the military engineer Vauban built for Louis XIV after the king captured the region from Spain in 1674. It is one of the twelve fortified sites that UNESCO listed together in 2008 as the Fortifications of Vauban, and it is a fine example of his work, with thick walls, bastions and long ramparts that follow the line of the rock.
Read the complete La citadelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La citadelle is where the day begins. Next is Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans.
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux wanted to build an ideal city, and he started with a salt factory. The Saline Royale at Arc-et-Senans was built between 1775 and 1779 on the orders of Louis XV's administration, to boil brine into salt, and Ledoux designed it as a perfect half circle of buildings around the director's house, with the workers, the boiling halls and the management all arranged in a geometric order meant to express reason, hierarchy and efficiency. It never grew into the full circular city he imagined, but what was built is astonishing, and it was listed by UNESCO in 1982, later joined by the great saltworks at Salins-les-Bains.
Read the complete Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai.
Salins-les-Bains lies at the bottom of a deep, narrow valley in the Jura, squeezed between two forested ridges, each crowned by a fort, and its wealth for most of history came from beneath its streets. Deep underground, salty water flows through layers of rock salt, and for over a thousand years the people of Salins pumped it up and boiled it in great pans to make salt, a precious commodity before refrigeration, used to preserve food and taxed heavily by the crown. The Grande Saline, the great saltworks, is now a museum, and you can walk through its underground galleries, where a huge hydraulic wheel and pump from the nineteenth century still turn, lifting brine from the depths.
Read the complete From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 52 km into the recorded legs you reach From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai. Next is Lac de Chalain.
Lac de Chalain is the largest natural lake in the French Jura, a long, green-blue lake set in a valley among forested limestone cliffs, and its shores were home to farming villages built on piles thousands of years ago. The remains of these villages, preserved in the lake bed, are part of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, listed by UNESCO in 2011. In the 1900s, when the lake level was lowered for a hydroelectric project, a dugout canoe and the remains of houses were found, and excavations since then have revealed a remarkable picture of life in the Neolithic.
Read the complete Lac de Chalain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lac de Chalain, about halfway. Next is Saline de Salins-les-Bains.
Salt built Salins-les-Bains, and the name gives it away. A salt spring, rich in brine, rises in this narrow valley in the Jura, and people have been boiling it for salt since Roman times or earlier. In the Middle Ages the saltworks were among the largest in the region, and the spring made the town and its lords rich. The Grande Saline, the great saltworks, is now a museum, and together with the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, the neoclassical complex designed by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, it has been listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Saline de Salins-les-Bains write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Saline de Salins-les-Bains sits at 140 km, about halfway. Next is back through Lac de Chalain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lac de Chalain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Lac de Chalain comes up about 161 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 200 km into the recorded legs you reach back through From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai. Next is back through Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans, late in the day. Next is La citadelle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La citadelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 252 km.
La citadelle → Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans → From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai → Lac de Chalain is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lac de Chalain → Saline de Salins-les-Bains is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Saline de Salins-les-Bains → back through Lac de Chalain is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Lac de Chalain → back through From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through From the Great Saltworks of Salins-les-Bai → back through Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans → La citadelle is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.