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 415 km round trip from Le Bugue - roughly 6 h 20 in the saddle. On the way it passes Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion, La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B and back through Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
In the nineteenth century, a gentlemanly sort of archaeology took place in the Vézère valley. Édouard Lartet, a French geologist, and Henry Christy, an English banker and ethnologist, came to the cliffs near Les Eyzies in the 1860s and began digging in the rock shelters at the foot of the cliff, the Laugerie sites. They found worked flint and bone, and above all engraved objects: a reindeer carved on an antler, a fish, and a small figure of a naked woman that the finders, with Victorian delicacy, called the Vénus impudique, the immodest Venus. These finds helped to show that people had lived here alongside reindeer, in a cold climate, many thousands of years ago.
Read the complete Laugerie basse write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Laugerie basse is where the day begins. Next is Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion.
Saint-Émilion is a wine village that looks like a stage set, with steep, cobbled lanes tumbling down a limestone hillside, golden stone houses, and a bell tower rising above the rooftops. The UNESCO listing covers not just the village but its whole jurisdiction, eight parishes of vineyards around it, recognising a landscape in which vines have been cultivated since Roman times. The village grew around the hermitage of Émilion, a Breton monk who lived in a cave here in the eighth century, and its most remarkable monument is the monolithic church, carved out of the rock beneath the bell tower.
Read the complete Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion comes up about 136 km into the recorded legs. Next is La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B.
The Gironde estuary is wide enough here to feel like an inland sea, and Vauban saw it as the gateway to Bordeaux that needed a lock. His answer, at the end of the seventeenth century, was a triangle of fortifications: the citadel at Blaye on the right bank, Fort Médoc on the left bank at Cussac, and between them Fort Paté, a squat stone tower built on an island in the middle of the river. Together they could cross their fire over the shipping channel, and today they share a place on the UNESCO list of Vauban's works. The citadel of Blaye is the most impressive of the three, a fortified town in its own right, with ramparts, gates and old barracks set high on a bluff above the water.
Read the complete La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 223 km into the recorded legs you reach La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B. Next is back through Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion, late in the day. Next is Laugerie basse.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Laugerie basse write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Laugerie basse. That is the ride.
Laugerie basse → Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion is 136 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion → La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B is 87 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La citadelle et le fort Paté et Médoc de B → back through Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Jurisdiction of Saint-Emilion → Laugerie basse is 136 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.