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.
302 km from Poissy to Poissy, about 4 h 57 of riding. The stops in between: Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor, Palace and Park of Fontainebleau, Provins and back through Palace and Park of Fontainebleau. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
This part of the ride is 68 km of Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor → Palace and Park of Fontainebleau.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor.
Le Corbusier lived at the top of this building for more than thirty years and, in the end, swam away from it for the last time. The block at the Porte Molitor, on the edge of Paris where the sixteenth arrondissement meets Boulogne-Billancourt, was designed in the early 1930s as a set of apartments, and the architect kept the two top floors for his own flat and studio. It has a glass-and-steel facade, an open plan and a curved roof, and it was one of the first buildings to show that the white geometric language of modernism could work in a Parisian street. UNESCO listed it in 2016 as part of his body of work, and the apartment can be visited on guided tours, so check the opening hours before turning up.
Read the complete Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Palace and Park of Fontainebleau.
Fontainebleau is the palace French kings actually lived in, as opposed to the one they built to impress, and for that reason it feels more human than Versailles. Almost every monarch from the Middle Ages to Napoleon III added a wing, a staircase or a garden, so the place is a jumble of styles, held together by its forest and its long ponds. Napoleon called it the true home of kings, and in April 1814 he said goodbye to his Old Guard in the courtyard that is still known as the Cour des Adieux, at the foot of the horseshoe staircase.
Read the complete Palace and Park of Fontainebleau write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 97 km into the recorded legs you reach Palace and Park of Fontainebleau. Next is Provins.
Provins rises out of the wheat fields of the Brie like something from a film set, and the odd thing is that it is almost entirely real. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries this was one of the four great fair towns of the counts of Champagne, where merchants from Flanders, Italy and beyond met to trade cloth, spices and money. When the fairs declined, Provins simply stopped growing, and so its ramparts, its gates and its medieval upper town survived the centuries more or less intact. UNESCO listed it in 2001 as a rare surviving example of a medieval fair town.
Read the complete Provins write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Provins, about halfway. Next is back through Palace and Park of Fontainebleau.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Palace and Park of Fontainebleau write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Palace and Park of Fontainebleau sits at 225 km, about halfway. Next is back through Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor comes up about 276 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner closes the day.
Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner → Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor → Palace and Park of Fontainebleau is 68 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Palace and Park of Fontainebleau → Provins is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Provins → back through Palace and Park of Fontainebleau is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Palace and Park of Fontainebleau → back through Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor is 69 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Immeuble locatif à la Porte Molitor → Villa Savoye et loge du jardiner is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.