Banks of the Seine and Sénart Forest

Parking: Domaine départemental du Bois Chardon, on the D448 (formerly N448) at the entrance to Draveil (Champrosay district), coming from Soisy-sur-Seine.
The entrance is almost opposite the Draveil entrance sign, on the left-hand side. Conversely, when travelling towards Soisy, it is on the right-hand side next to the Draveil exit sign.

(S/E) Exit the car park via the entrance you used to enter and cross the D448 _ take care _. Continue straight ahead on the Route Forestière des Dames and go up into the woods. Pass the Carrefour des Dames and continue to the Carrefour Pacôme. Turn left onto the Route forestière de Draveil until the next crossroads, in front of the Ermitage. Turn right onto the Route forestière de l'Ermitage and walk along the wall to the last entrance on the right (closed), which used to give access to Nadar's beautiful house, visible behind the gate (*).

(1) Continue in the same direction using the path that leads back to the road open to cars, and continue to the Carrefour de l'Ermitage with its large roundabout. Turn right onto Route Forestière des Granges until you reach the Charmant crossroads (small roundabout). Turn 45° to the right onto Route Forestière des Meillottes until you reach^{the first} crossroads, Chêne Prieur (small roundabout).

(2) Turn 45° left onto Route Forestière de Draveil until the next crossroads. Continue along the path in the same direction (ignore the signposting to the left onto Route de Soisy). Pass under the high-voltage power lines and turn left to go around a residential area on your left. Take a narrow passage on the left between two posts (gate on stones). Continue between two fences and enter Soisy, arriving on Rue Jean de la Fontaine.

(3) Cross the street and first turn right then left to take the footpath that runs along the left side of Rue de l'Ermitage. Cross this street at the school bus stop and arrive in front of the EPNAK de Soisy, formerly "ERP Malleterre" (*), on your right.

(4) See the beautiful chapel and then the castle. Continue straight ahead on Rue de l'Ermitage. Cross Rue du 8 mai 1945 on the right and 80 metres further on, on the right, you will find the entrance gate to Parc du Grand Veneur.
Enter the park. Walk through a row of trees to find the path on the left that runs parallel to the street. Follow it around the large clearing before descending into the woods and reaching a cave with a spring, typical of the decorative features of the period. Continue downhill along the small stream to the ponds in front of the Château du Grand Veneur (*). Go around the pink castle on the right to reach its courtyard façade.

(5) Walk along the façade to the end and arrive in front of the annex building in line with the château. Go through the gate to the right of the annex and find the path that goes around the estate, and take it almost in line with the previous annex. A few metres further on, take the path on the right that leads down to the white château of the new town hall. Leave the park through the passageway and gate on the left as you descend, then follow the street that passes to the left of the château. Go around it to reach the pedestrian square in front of the château/town hall (*).

(6) Cross the square towards the restaurant "Le Cosy", then cross Rue Notre Dame _ caution _. Walk along the church to the left, along Rue de l'Église. Cross the square in front of the church to reach Rue Galignani, turn left, then cross Boulevard de la République and continue opposite, Avenue Chevalier, until you reach^{the first} crossroads. Turn right onto Rue Victor Hugo. Pass in front of the mansion at No. 6 and continue to the end of the street to reach Boulevard Aristide Briand.

(7) See the beautiful house opposite and take the boulevard on the left. Walk along the sports fields and reach the Seine. Turn left and follow the Seine to the dam. Use the ramp to climb onto the footbridge and cross the Seine over the dam.

(8) Coming down from the footbridge, follow the Seine to the right, downstream, to Chemin de l'Écorne Bœuf on the left, which leads to Grand Bourg station.

(9) Continue straight ahead along the river. Pass under the Château de Trousseau, which overlooks the valley. Cross the small Ruisseau de L'Écoute s'il Pleut (*). Immediately afterwards, pass in front of the electrical substation and the sailing centre at the exit of the pedestrian zone.

(10) Turn left onto Chemin de la Sous Station. Pass under the railway line, then climb the few steps on the right to reach Étang de Ris-Orangis (*). In front of the pond, follow the footbridge on the left that runs along the water and goes around the pond on the left. At the end, turn right to walk along the short western side of the pond. Roughly halfway along the short side, turn left onto Allée du Lac through the new neighbourhood (*). Arrive under the glass roofs and follow Passage de la Grande Halle to the right. Arrive at Rue Freyssinet (*) and turn left. Pass at the foot of a green-tiled building and find Rue de Seine, which continues to the right under the railway line.

(11) Turn right into the underpass to reach the banks of the Seine. Turn left towards the bridge. Pass Rue de la Malterie (on your left) and some old buildings, the last of which has been repainted pink (*).
At this point, take the pedestrian crossing on the right towards the Seine to pass under the bridge. On the other side, climb the stairs to reach the bridge and cross the Seine without changing pavements. At the other end, go back down the stairs to reach the banks of the Seine.

(12) Walk along the Seine on your right with the^GR®®2(white and red markings). Walk along the sports fields (*) and the old Saint-Victor port at the end of Rue Sainte-Anne.

(13) Just before a field, take a yellow marked path (not very visible) on the left, uphill (leaving the^GR®®). At the end, follow the markings on the right, along the top edge of the field, then on the left before the high-voltage lines.
After a curtain of trees, leave the markings and turn right into the clearing parallel to the Seine, passing under the high-voltage power lines. Towards the end of the clearing, climb up to the left. Cross the bridge and walk along the wall of the Bois Chardon allotment garden. At the top, follow the wall to the right. Opposite the gate, climb left towards the car park, passing to the right of the Trésor fountain (S/E).

The route is accessible by public transport: take the RER D between Paris and Corbeil-Essonnes. There are two options for getting off:
- Grand Bourg station: start the hike at (10).
- Ris-Orangis station: start the hike at (12).

Markings:
- Chemin de Grande Randonnée (GR®), national level: White/Red.
Chemin de Grande Randonnée de Pays GRP®, often a long regional circular: generally yellow/red (white/green for the Tour de la Forêt de Fontainebleau).
Petite Randonnée trails, generally local circular trails lasting a few hours: a single mark in yellow, blue, green, orange, etc.
Note: as they are increasing in number, a PR® may have recently changed colour.

The indications (*) in the description refer to the chapter "During the hike or nearby".

(S/E) The Bois-Chardon estate, which includes the former garden of the Pont Chardon castle farm on the D448, has been acquired by the Île-de-France region. When you arrive on the D448, the houses on the left are built in the castle grounds, which are visible at the entrance to the town.

(1) The Hermitage of Sénart. It is said to have been founded by Saint Louis, who had a chapel built in the forest of Sénart to pray when he came there to hunt. It was abandoned and reused several times before becoming a hamlet/hermitage dependent on the Abbey of Notre-Dame d'Yerres in 1695. The church was rebuilt in 1739. At the time, the hermits made a silky fabric called sénardine, named after the Forest of Sénart.
In 1794, the hermitage was sold as national property. Subsequently, private individuals – including Nadar – bought it to turn it into residences during the second half of the 19th century. Nadar set up a studio there, and the church was converted into a restaurant that operated until the^second half of the 20th century.
A quick word about Nadar, the nickname of Felix Tournachon, a renowned 19th-century photographer. But he was much more than that: a brilliant jack-of-all-trades who was a journalist, caricaturist, writer, legionnaire in Poland, inventor of improvements to early photography, secret agent, and the aeronaut who inspired Jules Verne for his novel "Five Weeks in a Balloon", etc. He used the balloon to invent aerial photography. During the war of 1870, he put his experience to good use for the government and laid the foundations for the aeronautical industry for transporting mail and people, as well as aerial surveillance, while Paris was surrounded by the Prussians.
Here, he welcomed his neighbour, Alphonse Daudet, whose villa still stands in Champrosay.

(4) 1, Rue de l'Ermitage: EPNAK and its Professional Retraining Centre. This is a former castle built of brick and stone, the central part of which dates back to 1644. This residence belonged to General Leblond de Saint-Hilaire, a Napoleonic general buried in the Pantheon. The estate includes a beautiful chapel with magnificent mosaics and stained glass windows.
The Grand Veneur Park. Must-sees: The cave and its spring, and, on the left, the obelisk, the Egyptian temple on the old ice house, and the totem pole. In the area, admire the group of three sequoias, recognisable to the touch because their bark feels like it has been carved from felt. This protects them from the forest fires that are part of their existence.

(5) Château Rose du Grand Veneur. Before 1644, this property was called Les Bouquins. It has had several owners, including Jean Davelouis in 1802, who had the park landscaped, and, in 1832, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, naturalist and administrator of the Jardin des Plantes.

(6) The château-town hall of Soisy-sur-Seine is located in a four-hectare wooded park and has outbuildings. It was recently a centre for physical medicine and rehabilitation. It was bought by the municipality to become the new town hall, allowing us to enjoy the park as a continuation of that of the Grand Veneur.
The Church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption: Dating from the 13th century, the church was the chapel of an ancient castle. It was transformed between 1700 and 1825. Inside, you can see the altarpieces bearing the effigies of Gilles Malet, his two sons and his wife, Nicole de Chambly.

(9) Towards the end, just before the electrical substation: Ru de "L'Écoute s'il Pleut" ("If you hear the rain, it means the stream will fill up and the harvests will be better"). This is not a real stream but the end of a drainage ditch that collects rainwater that used to flood the crops on the plateau due to the lack of a spillway.

(10) The Ris-Orangis pond: This is a water reserve dug to prevent a possible fire at the Springer distillery, which occupied a large part of the space now taken up by the new residential neighbourhood on the other side of the pond.
Rue Freyssinet: we are in a former industrial area. Freyssinet was the civil engineer who founded the company of the same name, which exploits his patent for prestressed concrete, which revolutionised the construction of long bridges.

(11) Just after arriving at the quay, on the left: Rue de la Malterie and the remaining buildings of the distillery. Before the bridge, you can see a renovated building painted pink, with an old industrial building on the left with arched windows at the top and bottom: this is the old malt mill. All of the remaining buildings are to be renovated and converted into a vocational school.
In 1872, Austrian baron Maximilien de Springer, who had patented a yeast more suitable than brewer's yeast for bread-making and fermentation, moved to Paris to exploit his invention on a large scale. To this end, he built a factory in Maison-Alfort, which still exists today, for yeast production, malting and distillation. In 1891, he joined forces with industrial architect Paul Friesé to create a new, very large malting and distilling plant based on his yeast, hence the former name of the quay: the Dock des Alcools. It subsequently became part of the Malteries Franco Belge group, which was bought by Moulins Soufflet in 1994 before closing down.
The factory consisted of several departments: the malting plant, which processed cereals to convert starch into sugar; the mill, which ground the malt; the fermentation plant, which used yeast to convert sugar into alcohol; the distillation/rectification plant, which separated and concentrated the alcohols; and the draff workshop, which produced residues used for animal feed. Note: brewery spent grain is becoming fashionable as an aperitif biscuit. To this complex must be added the peripheral buildings: granaries, generators, ancillary workshops, stables, maintenance facilities, etc. The cereals used are maize, rice, rye and barley.
The new eco-neighbourhood therefore mainly occupies the space of the peripheral workshops and subcontractors.
Near the malting plant, on the other side of the bridge, the architect subsequently built another malting plant: Diamalt, which manufactured baby food: Blédine de Jacquemaire, which later became Blédina.

(12) The path that runs along the Seine upstream from the bridge is called Chemin du Bac. This gives an idea of the former use of the concrete areas along the water's edge, typical of an old port. A little further on, where Rue Sainte-Anne ends, is Port St Victor. Nothing remains of it today.

(S/E) The community garden, managed as a team. The stream is called the Ru d'Or, and comes from the Fontaine des Trésors.