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 439 km round trip from Saint-Dié-des-Vosges - roughly 8 h 37 in the saddle. It goes by way of Grand Ventron, Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp, Fortifications of Vauban and back through Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 70 km this is Route des Cretes, Vosges, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Le Corbusier designed only one factory in his long career, and it stands in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, a town in the Meurthe valley on the western side of the Vosges mountains. The Manufacture Claude et Duval, a hosiery factory built between 1946 and 1951, is a concrete block raised on pilotis, with a roof terrace and brightly coloured interiors, and it embodies many of the architect's principles. It was part of his plans for the reconstruction of Saint-Dié after the town was largely destroyed by the retreating German army in November 1944, though most of his grand urban plan was never built. In 2016, the factory was included in the UNESCO listing of the architectural work of Le Corbusier, alongside buildings in seven countries.
Read the complete La Manufacture à Saint- Dié write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La Manufacture à Saint- Dié is where the day begins. Next is Grand Ventron.
At around 1,200 metres, the Grand Ventron is one of the high rounded summits on the main crest of the southern Vosges, where Lorraine meets Alsace. To the west lie the valleys of La Bresse and Ventron; to the east the ground falls steeply into the Thur valley above Kruth. The top is open, grassy and wind combed, a classic Vosges hautes-chaumes landscape of summer pastures, bilberry and granite boulders, with beech and fir forest closing in below. On a clear day the view runs across the Alsace plain to the Black Forest, and on rare exceptional days the Alps show as a pale line far to the south.
Read the complete Grand Ventron write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grand Ventron comes up about 70 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp.
Notre-Dame-du-Haut sits on a hill above Ronchamp, at the foot of the Vosges, and it is one of the strangest and most beautiful buildings of the twentieth century. Le Corbusier designed it in the early 1950s and it was consecrated in 1955. The white walls curve and lean, the roof sweeps up like a hull or a hat, and the thick walls are pierced by small deep windows filled with coloured glass. Inside, light falls in coloured pools on the floor, and the whole room feels carved rather than built. There has been a pilgrim chapel on this hill for centuries, and the earlier church was destroyed in the war, which is what led to the commission.
Read the complete Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 129 km into the recorded legs you reach Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp. Next is Fortifications of Vauban.
Victor Hugo was born in Besançon in 1802, and so were the Lumière brothers, the pioneers of cinema, a generation later. The capital of Franche-Comté sits in a tight loop of the river Doubs, with the old town on the peninsula inside the loop and the citadel on a rock at the neck, closing the only side not protected by water. The citadel was built by Vauban, Louis XIV's great military engineer, after the French conquest of the region in the late seventeenth century, and it is one of the twelve groups of Fortifications of Vauban listed by UNESCO in 2008.
Read the complete Fortifications of Vauban write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fortifications of Vauban, about halfway. Next is back through Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp sits at 255 km, about halfway. Next is back through Grand Ventron.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Grand Ventron write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Grand Ventron comes up about 368 km into the recorded legs. Next is La Manufacture à Saint- Dié.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Manufacture à Saint- Dié write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La Manufacture à Saint- Dié closes the day.
La Manufacture à Saint- Dié → Grand Ventron is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Grand Ventron → Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp → Fortifications of Vauban is 94 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Fortifications of Vauban → back through Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp is 87 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp → back through Grand Ventron is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Grand Ventron → La Manufacture à Saint- Dié is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.