CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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380 km from Athens to Athens, about 7 h 41 of riding. The stops in between: Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus, Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns, Archaeological Site of Mycenae and back through Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Athens has more motorbikes per street than almost any city in Europe, and the drivers are used to them. Scooters thread through every gap, couriers weave between buses, and the whole basin between Mount Hymettus and the sea hums at a pitch that a visitor from the north needs a day to tune into. At the centre of the din the Acropolis stands on its limestone rock, the Parthenon's marble glowing gold at sunset, and it makes the whole mess of concrete around it seem like a footnote.
Read the complete Athens write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Athens is where the day begins. Next is Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus.
Drop a coin in the centre of the orchestra at Epidaurus and people sitting in the top row, fifty-odd rows above, will hear it. The theatre of the sanctuary of Asklepios, built in the fourth century BC, is famous for its acoustics and its almost perfect state of preservation, and it still hosts performances of ancient drama during the summer festival. But the theatre was only part of the sanctuary. Epidaurus was the most famous healing centre of the ancient Greek world, where the sick came to sleep in the sacred buildings and hope that the god Asklepios would visit them in a dream with a cure.
Read the complete Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus comes up 35 km in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
70 km in you reach Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus. Next is Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns.
The plain of Argos is a wide, flat basin of orange groves and olive trees tucked into the Peloponnese, and on its edge, a few kilometres apart, stand the two strongholds that gave the Greek Bronze Age its name. Mycenae sits on a rocky spur between two ravines, with Argos eleven kilometres to the south-west and the sea beyond, and Tiryns lies lower down near the shore, on a low rocky mound that once stood by the water.
Read the complete Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns, about halfway. Next is Archaeological Site of Mycenae.
The Lion Gate is the thing everyone remembers. Two stone lionesses, facing each other across a central column, stand over the entrance to the citadel, carved some three and a half thousand years ago in the Bronze Age, and the walls beside the gate are built of boulders so huge that later Greeks thought only the Cyclopes could have lifted them. Inside is a royal burial ground, the Grave Circles, where in 1876 the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann found gold masks and weapons, and declared that he had looked upon the face of Agamemnon. The mask is older than Agamemnon would have been, but the name stuck.
Read the complete Archaeological Site of Mycenae write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Archaeological Site of Mycenae sits at 140 km, about halfway. Next is back through Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns comes up 175 km in. Next is back through Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
210 km in you reach back through Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus, late in the day. Next is Athens.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Athens write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 380 km.
Athens → Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus is 96 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus → Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns → back through Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus → Athens is 96 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.