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 proper escape from Barcelona with roads worth waking up for. Out of Barcelona and back again: 295 km, roughly 4 h 20 in the saddle. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,450 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Start with the grid. Barcelona's Eixample, the nineteenth-century extension designed by Ildefons Cerdà, is a field of identical square blocks with the corners cut off, so that every junction becomes a small octagonal plaza. It was meant to be egalitarian and airy, and for a rider it is wonderfully legible: you can always work out where you are, and the wide avenues let a motorcycle breathe. The city also has more motorbikes and scooters than almost any other in Europe, so drivers are used to them and parking for two wheels is routine rather than a fight.
Coll de Nargó is a small village in the Segre valley, in the pre-Pyrenees of Lleida, and it has two very different claims to fame. The first is the church of Sant Climent, a small Romanesque church with a tall, slender bell tower dating back to the eleventh century, one of the finest examples of early Catalan Romanesque architecture. The second is much older: the hills around the village are one of the richest sites for dinosaur eggs in Europe, and the Dinosfera museum explains how the area was once a nesting ground for large plant-eating dinosaurs, about seventy million years ago.
Return visit. Read the place description above.