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.
97 km from Versailles to Versailles, about 1 h 56 of riding. The stops in between: Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner, Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France and back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner. The line favours views over speed.
The ride follows Palace and Park of Versailles → Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner for 21 km.
Louis XIV wanted a stage on which the whole French nobility would have to perform for him, and Versailles is what that ambition looks like in stone, gilt and gravel. His father's modest hunting lodge on a damp plateau west of Paris grew, over decades of building, into the palace you see now, and in 1682 the court moved out here for good. The Hall of Mirrors, the chapel, the endless enfilade of state rooms: all of it was designed so that a duke had to queue to watch the king get dressed. A long way from the Paris mob, too, which was rather the point, until the mob walked out here in October 1789 and fetched the royal family back to the city.
Read the complete Palace and Park of Versailles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Palace and Park of Versailles 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 21 km into the recorded legs. Next is Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France.
At the heart of Paris, beside the rue de Rivoli, stands a Gothic tower that belongs to a church that no longer exists. The Tour Saint-Jacques is all that survives of the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, built in the early sixteenth century in the flamboyant Gothic style, and it was the traditional gathering point for pilgrims leaving Paris for Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. The church was demolished after the Revolution, but the tower was saved, and it now stands in a small garden, topped by a statue of Saint James.
Read the complete Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 48 km into the recorded legs you reach Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France. 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 Palace and Park of Versailles.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Palace and Park of Versailles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Palace and Park of Versailles. That is the ride.
Palace and Park of Versailles → Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner → Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France → back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner → Palace and Park of Versailles is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.