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 279 km round trip from Batumi - roughly 7 h 42 in the saddle. On the way it passes Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands, Kintrishi-Mtirala, Ispani and Grigoleti. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Batumi is Georgia's seaside city, and it feels a little like three cities layered together. The old Black Sea port still has its cobbled streets and nineteenth-century buildings, the boulevard runs for miles along a pebbly beach, and behind it all rise the glassy towers of a recent building boom, some of them rather outlandish. Behind the city the Lesser Caucasus climbs steeply into green hills, and that backdrop is what makes the town interesting for riders.
Read the complete Batumi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Batumi is where the day begins. Next is Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands.
Rain is the first thing you notice on Georgia's Black Sea coast, which gets some of the heaviest rainfall in the Caucasus and grows a green, tangled forest to match. The Colchic forests and wetlands lie between the sea and the foot of the Lesser Caucasus, behind the resort town of Kobuleti and inland from the lanes of Ispani, with Chakvi, a small coastal town of eight thousand people, about eighteen kilometres away and Batumi not much further. UNESCO listed the Colchic rainforests in 2021 as a remnant of the temperate forests that once covered this part of the world, with trees such as alder, hornbeam, beech and the evergreen cherry laurel, hung with lianas and ferns.
Read the complete Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands comes up about 57 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kintrishi-Mtirala.
Adjara is the strangest corner of Georgia, a damp subtropical strip between the Black Sea and the Lesser Caucasus where tea and tangerines grow within sight of snow. Mtirala and Kintrishi are two neighbouring protected areas inland from Kobuleti and Chakvi, and they hold what is left of the Colchic forest, a relict of the lush woodland that covered this coast before the ice ages. Rainfall is among the highest in the country, and the hills are a tangle of beech, chestnut, alder, rhododendron and box, with ferns, lianas and moss on every branch. Mtirala means something like the weeping or the crying one in Georgian, a reference to the constant drizzle and mist, and you can see why.
Read the complete Kintrishi-Mtirala write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 58 km into the recorded legs you reach Kintrishi-Mtirala. Next is Ispani.
Most of Georgia's Black Sea coast is subtropical, with tea plantations, citrus groves and lush forests, and on the plain near Kobuleti, between the sea and the hills, lies one of the strangest landscapes in the Caucasus. The Ispani mires are raised peat bogs, domes of sphagnum moss that have grown over thousands of years, fed only by rain, and they are among the few such bogs in the subtropics. They are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands, inscribed in 2021.
Read the complete Ispani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ispani, about halfway. Next is Grigoleti.
Grigoleti is a strip of pine woods and black sand on Georgia's Black Sea coast, squeezed between the sea and the great reed beds of Lake Paliastomi, a few kilometres north of the resort of Ureki and a short hop south of the port of Poti. It is a holiday place for Georgian families rather than foreign tourists, with guesthouses among the trees, wooden cafés and a beach that stretches as far as you can see. The sand here, and even more at Ureki, is dark and magnetic, full of iron-rich minerals washed down from the mountains, and locals swear it does wonders for aching joints. After a long day in the saddle feel free to test the theory.
Read the complete Grigoleti write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grigoleti sits at 95 km, about halfway. Next is back through Ispani.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ispani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ispani comes up about 171 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Kintrishi-Mtirala.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kintrishi-Mtirala write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 201 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Kintrishi-Mtirala. Next is back through Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands, late in the day. Next is Batumi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Batumi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 279 km.
Batumi → Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kintrishi-Mtirala → Ispani is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ispani → Grigoleti is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Grigoleti → back through Ispani is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ispani → back through Kintrishi-Mtirala is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Colchic Rainforests and Wetlands → Batumi is 79 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.