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.
408 km from Meyrueis to Meyrueis, about 7 h 16 of riding. On the way it passes Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc, Pont du Gard and back through Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Most visitors to the Cévennes come for the gorges, but the real character of this country lies on top of them. The causses are high limestone plateaus, treeless and wind-scoured, where sheep have grazed for millennia and the horizon runs on for fifty kilometres. Cut deep into them are the gorges of the Tarn and the Jonte, with their cliffs and caves, and to the east the Cévennes mountains rise in ridges of schist and chestnut forest. The whole area is listed by UNESCO as a cultural landscape of Mediterranean agriculture and pastoralism, and much of it falls within the Cévennes National Park, set up in 1970.
Read the complete The Causses and the Cévennes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Causses and the Cévennes is where the day begins. Next is Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc.
In December 1994, three cavers felt a draught coming from a pile of rocks above the Ardèche gorge, dug their way in and found themselves in a cave that nobody had entered for thousands of years. On the walls were lions, rhinoceroses, mammoths, horses and bears, drawn with a mastery that changed what we thought we knew about early art. The paintings of the Chauvet cave, named after one of the trio, Jean-Marie Chauvet, are around thirty-six thousand years old, roughly twice the age of Lascaux. The original cave is sealed to protect it, but a full-scale replica, the Grotte Chauvet 2, opened nearby in 2015.
Read the complete Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc comes up about 131 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pont du Gard.
Built without mortar, three tiers of arches carry a water channel across the gorge of the Gardon nearly fifty metres above the river, and the stones still fit together as if they had been placed last week. The Pont du Gard was one section of an aqueduct some fifty kilometres long that brought spring water from near Uzès to Roman Nîmes in the first century, with a total drop of only a few metres over the whole distance. It is a masterpiece of surveying as much as building, and it has stood through floods that have destroyed far younger bridges.
Read the complete Pont du Gard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 204 km into the recorded legs you reach Pont du Gard. Next is back through Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc, late in the day. Next is The Causses and the Cévennes.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Causses and the Cévennes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at The Causses and the Cévennes. That is the ride.
The Causses and the Cévennes → Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc is 131 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc → Pont du Gard is 73 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Pont du Gard → back through Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc is 70 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Decorated Cave of Pont d’Arc → The Causses and the Cévennes is 134 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.