Motorcycle tours in the Vercours in France

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Motorcycle tours in the Vercours in France
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Motorcycle tours in the Vercours in France

Motorcycle tour in France: Vercors
Exciting driving experiences await south of Grenoble

The Vercors, south of Grenoble, is a maze of gorges and tiny mountain roads that climb vertical cliffs. Dramatic driving experiences for drivers free from giddiness are guaranteed.

Gerhard Eisenschink

06/09/2011


Motorcycle tours in the Vercours in France


Iron ham

Grenoble, the city with the enviable frame of vertical limestone stumps and adrenaline-pumping mountain routes all around.

Cut off road”, “dangerous section of the route” – Just a glance at the Michelin map shows that unusual driving situations can be expected in the Vercors. With that I was able to impress my buddy Kurt badly while planning the trip. Gorges, dizzying mountain stretches and an insane number of curves, buddy Kurt takes it. His first trip to France has been arranged.

“Road closed, danger of falling rocks, do not park here.” The language on the mountain road behind Montaud is clear. 50 meters after the sign, a huge pile of earth across the street. No obstacle for our enduros, one KTM 990 Adventure and a KTM 690. We feel our way further, because after all we want to know what of one “clipped road” is to be kept. A little later we see that this road will probably never be continuous again: In the 1990s, a huge rock fall came off the vertical rock face above us and carved out a real gorge. There is no longer the slightest trace of the road. Then behind us a thud, a head-sized stone crashes down. Dozens of smaller and larger boulders, along which we have felt our way up to this point, speak a clear language – if you don’t want to believe the warning on the sign. “Let’s go!”, Kurt just says dryly.

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Motorcycle tours in the Vercours in France

Motorcycle tour in France: Vercors
Exciting driving experiences await south of Grenoble

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Coming from the north via Grenoble and the Isère valley, we are about to feel our way into the Vercors, this chunky rock massif, which is just 30 by 40 kilometers in size, but extremely winding. Its white limestone cliffs rise up to over 2000 meters and frame a ravaged high plateau, perforated like Swiss cheese. Deep and narrow gorges wedge between vertical rock walls through the oversized Vercors cheese, and the roads follow them. Partly also directly into the rock faces and over breakneck stretches upwards.

Not all roads can do this permanently. The mountain has recovered this one here at Montaud. So back to the village and via Saint-Quentin back down into the Isère valley. We follow the river south and find a tiny lane in Saint-Gervais that leads back to the rocks. A little later we see that streets in the Vercors have no respect even for vertical rock faces. High above the Canyon des Ecouges, the asphalt strip, which is just as wide as a car, has been chiseled into the vertical and led around an overhanging rock.

Until a few years ago it was one of the few accesses to the plateau. Today the breakneck part was defused through a tunnel. But what kind of thing: Claustrophobic and pitch black it goes unlit through the middle of the rock, which lets drops of water fall into our jacket collars.

Comparatively relaxed, we then roll south on the plateau of the Vercorsblock. But this extraordinary landscape soon resumes its dramaturgy: the road drops steeply into the Gorges de la Bourne, a deep and long gorge that divides the Vercorsblock into a north and a south half. High above the Bourne River, the road winds under vertical rock walls, disappears into small tunnels or under overhangs, curves around exposed rocky outcrops. As you already know from the Canyon des Ecouges that you have just conquered.


Motorcycle tours in the Vercours in France


Iron ham

You landed happily in the lush valley: from Combe Laval to Col de la Machine it’s not just through vertical rock.

Villard-de-Lans is reached, the main town on the Vercors plateau. Cozy hotel, motorcycle garage, fabulous dinner. From here we will examine this winding, perforated Vercors cheese for a few more days. For example the Gorges du Nan the next morning. The threading track is again the Gorges de la Bourne. Then our branch up to Presles and out of the gorge. Again a full Vercors program: rock galleries, tunnels, exposed spots, tiny lanes in a vertical rock face, bordered by a knee-high wall. “Nothing for pants shit”, says buddy Kurt looking into the sheer abyss.

At the top of the plateau, after a few kilometers, we find the junction to the next nightmare route for all pants-shit, the tiny road over the Gorges du Nan to Cognin-les-Gorges. Actually, we thought we had already seen everything that can be hewn in the middle of a rock face on Hammerstrasse. But the Gorges du Nan go one better. Again just a knee-high wall that separates the vertical rock wall from the abyss. Overhangs, ledges, tunnels again – and everything so narrow that you don’t dare take your eyes off the front wheel. We press along the rock face just to be a bit away from this abyss. Speed ​​and driving pleasure? Not now! Oncoming traffic? Please not now! Fortunately, nobody can get through here. Anyone who drove this road knows why.

In Cognin-les-Gorges you have reached the Isère valley, and a brisker pace to the south follows. For just five kilometers, then a little road leads back up to the Vercors block. This time – what a miracle – just tight curves for fun driving. Without kneeling, we reach the remote Montchardon with its Tibetan monastery. Colorfully painted columns stand on the street, green grows all around. Relax, take a deep breath. The Vercors once without fear of heights.

But there are still many tiny paths for explorers. We can only find the slope towards Le Fas due to a hiking sign, but the route is not closed. The fact that it is stony and washed out can only please our enduro bikes. It goes through the forest and then over wide expanses of grass until we reach tiny Le Fas. Into the cheese, out of the cheese: From Le Fas there is another breakneck curve stretch down into the Isère Valley to Saint-Pierre-de-Cherennes. Actually, we’ve been zigzagging for the last three hours and only within a radius of less than ten kilometers. But with landscape cinema of the wildest kind.

It may be a bit of a historical ambience as a contrast. We reach – again driving along the limestone cliffs in the Isère valley – Pont-en-Royans, the architectural treasure chest of the Vercors. Perhaps it’s the rock overhangs all around that have inspired people for centuries to build their homes like an overhanging cliff over the River Bourne. “Even when looking out of the toilet window, they get a fear of heights”, says Kurt.


Motorcycle tours in the Vercours in France


Iron ham

Excursion to the high Alps of Savoy: the pass road to L’Alpe d’Huez offers endless bends.

When it comes to fear of heights, we’re already back on the road after a short break. Destination: Col de la Machine. The 1000 meter high pass to the south of the Vercors is relatively unspectacular in the forest, but to reach it you pass the magic name of this region: Combe Laval. Rock walls encircle a valley head like an amphitheater. In the middle of the vertical, 600 meters above the valley floor, the stunned eye makes a horizontal line, the street as a gallery blasted into the rock.

Then we are up there, and almost without warning, the completely normal Vercors madness begins with the dance on the precipice. Tunnel, rock outcrop, hardly any real road delimitation – and the wide mouth of an omnipresent abyss.

This narrow traffic route is so insane that we immediately turn around and drive back in the opposite direction. Now we can’t push ourselves along the rock face, now we’re driving outside on the precipice, trying to keep our breathing normal and our view of the road.

The discovery of slowness with the fear of the vertical. At the Col de la Machine there is a break to look at the map. Fabulous curves await us around Grenoble and the Vercors. In the south the Col de la Bataille and the Col de Rousset, in the east the Savoy Alps with names like Galibier or Croix de Fer – slopes, load changes, spurts and hot brakes. But the prelude to every further day of driving has to be the adrenaline rush that only the Vercors offers. A pack of fear of heights on one of these mountain routes as a threading piece of a special kind. Long live the vertical!


Motorcycle tours in the Vercours in France


Werel

Travel time: 3 days, distance covered: 450 kilometers.

More vertical is hardly possible: The Vercors is an incredibly winding and ravaged mountain range with the wildest roads carved into the rock that you can imagine.

Directions
The fastest way is via the Rhine Valley to Mulhouse and on the French motorway (toll) via Lyon to Grenoble. The Vercors can be reached earlier if you change from the A 48 in Voreppe to the A 49 in the direction of Romans / Bourg / Valence and one exit later in Saint-Quentin, you spectacularly thread into the rocks. The most winding approach is via Switzerland and starting from the Valais you can take alpine passes such as the Great and Small St. Bernhard, Iseran and Galibier with you to get to Grenoble. From there on the D 1532 on the left bank of the Isère and in Sassenage through the Gorges d‘Engins to Villard-de-Lans.

accommodation
Centrally located in Villard-de-Lans and popular with motorcyclists: Hotel / Pension Les Bruyères (31, Rue Victor Hugo, phone 00 33/4 76/95 11 83, www.hotel-les-bruyeres.com). In the small but very cozy rooms you can stay for 35 euros p. P. in a double room. Motorcycle garage and tour tips included. Breakfast buffet 8 euros. Maps: Most accurate and with a scale of 1: 150,000 ideal for the Vercors: Michelin map 333, Isère / Savoie, Travel House Media, 7.50 euros. A little more surroundings: Michelin map No. 523, Rhône Valley / Franz. Alps, scale 1: 200,000, 8.50 euros.

Worth seeing
The stalactite cave of Choranche can be reached via the Gorges de la Bourne. With rooms up to 15 meters high, fossils and an underground river and lake. www.grottes-de-choranche.com

Pont-en-Royans is a small town with 16th century architecture known for its hanging houses growing straight out of the rock over the River Bourne and its bridge. www.ot-pont-en-royans.com

The Musee de la Prehistoire in the Parc Naturel Regional du Vercors in Vassieux-en-Vercors offers a very imaginative and modern exhibition on prehistoric people in Vercors. www.prehistoire-vercors.fr

In Vassieux-en-Vercors there is also the Musee de la Resistance, which shows how the Vercors was a center of French resistance during World War II: Musee de la Resistance, www.musee-resistance.com

Addresses
ATOUT FRANCE, French National Tourist Board in Frankfurt / Main, www.de.franceguide.com. In France, the regional office Rhône-Alpes, 8, rue Paul Montrochet, 69002 Lyon, phone 00 33/4 72/59 21 59, www.rhonealpes-tourisme.com and on site the Office de Tourisme du Vercors, 26420 La Chapelle-en -Vercors, phone 04 75/48 22 54, www.vercors.com (French and English). You can also find information locally at www.grenoble-isere.info and at www.villarddelans.com

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