Cyclist Ride by Mitchell Beazley

Author:Mitchell Beazley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Octopus
Published: 2020-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

FRANCE

Vercors

Distance: 142km (88 miles)

Elevation: 3,683m (12,083ft)

With its towering cliffs, precarious hanging roads and stunning scenery, the Vercors region of France should be teeming with riders. Should be.

They call it the Fortress, and you will understand why when you see the forbidding cliff faces of the Vercors Massif. Yellow-grey limestone rock intermingles with swathes of luscious green vegetation, pouring into gorges and spilling through valleys to create a truly unique, and slightly daunting, citadel.

Few people know it’s here, though, because there are the Alps on one side and Mont Ventoux on the other. But what the area lacks in snowy peaks, it makes up for in mysterious tunnel passages, cliff-hanging roads and a welcome lack of tourists. It’s an undiscovered gem.

This loop of the massif starts in Saint-Jean-en-Royans, from which you take the D54 north to skirt the western flank of the plateau. You head through shady walnut groves and over bridges spanning the streams that make their way first to the River Isère and then on to the mighty Rhône.

In the town of Pont-en-Royans, in which every building appears to be perilously stuck to a cliff, you cross the River Bourne and get your first glimpse into the daunting massif interior through a gap in the cliff. Then you roll into the village of Cognin-les-Gorges and follow signs for the Gorges du Nan. The first buttresses of the plateau erupt out of the ground in a wall of vegetation. Nonetheless, the road manages to find an opening in the forest and picks its way back and forth up the face of the cliff.

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