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 193 km one-way ride from near Digne-les-Bains, about 3 h 22 of riding. On the way it passes Sisteron and Gap. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,700 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 40 km this is Route Napoleon, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Digne-les-Bains is a town of nineteen thousand people at the heart of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, a place with an unusual mixture of attractions. It lies in a wide valley at the meeting of several rivers, surrounded by mountains, and its hot springs have drawn visitors since Roman times. The thermal baths are still open. The town is the capital of lavender country, and each August the Corso de la Lavande fills the streets with floats decorated with the flowers. The scent of lavender is everywhere in summer, from the fields that cover the plateaus around.
Read the complete Digne-les-Bains write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Digne les Bains is where the day begins. Next is Sisteron.
Sisteron is the gate of Provence, a town of seven and a half thousand on the Durance river, where the valley pinches into a narrow gap, the Clue de Sisteron, between two walls of tilted limestone. The great citadel, a fortress on the rock above the town, has watched over the passage since the Middle Ages, and the present walls date largely from the sixteenth century. Napoleon passed through on 5 March 1815, on his way from the Riviera to Grenoble, and the Route Napoléon is marked by signs and eagle plaques along the road, from here to the north.
Read the complete Sisteron write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sisteron comes up about 40 km into the recorded legs. Next is Gap.
Gap is the highest prefecture in France, sitting at about seven hundred and fifty metres in a wide, sunny basin in the Hautes-Alpes, with mountains on every side. People often ride through it without more than a glance, which is a pity, because the town, with some forty thousand people, makes a comfortable halt on a mountain route: fuel stations at every entrance, supermarkets, a pleasant old centre with a pedestrian core, and cafés where you can sit in the sun. The Alpine light is strong here and the air dry, with something like three hundred days of sunshine a year, a figure the town likes to repeat.
Read the complete Gap write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 91 km into the recorded legs you reach Gap. Next is Grenoble.
Grenoble is the capital of the French Alps in everything but title, a big, studenty, slightly industrial city set in a flat basin where three valleys meet, the Isère, the Drac and the Grésivaudan. The mountains here are not a backdrop but a wall: the Vercors on one side, Chartreuse on another, Belledonne on the third, so that wherever you look in the city there is rock rising above the rooftops. It is the end of the Route Napoléon in this case, the road Napoleon took in March 1815 when he landed from Elba and marched north to reclaim power, and the story goes that the people of Grenoble opened the gates to him and the army simply melted into his ranks.
Read the complete Grenoble write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grenoble closes the day.
Digne les Bains → Sisteron is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sisteron → Gap is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Gap → Grenoble is 102 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.