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.
310 km from Altstadt Nord to Altstadt Nord, about 4 h 21 of riding. It goes by way of Neuss-Koenenlager, Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 2, Kottenforst Süd | Villiper Bach and Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 1. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Cologne's cathedral is the first thing you notice and the last thing you forget. The twin spires climb a hundred and fifty-seven metres above the Rhine, and the building took more than six hundred years, from 1248 to 1880, to finish, a scale of ambition that still feels slightly absurd. It survived the bombing of the Second World War, which flattened much of the surrounding city, and the sight of the black Gothic stone rising out of postwar rubble in old photographs is one of the great images of the period. Climb the tower if your knees allow; the view is the best in the city.
Read the complete Cologne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cologne is where the day begins. Next is Neuss-Koenenlager.
On the southern edge of Neuss, in a residential area near the Rhine, lies one of the most important Roman military sites in Germany, though you would hardly know it from the surface. This was Novaesium, a legionary fortress that housed thousands of soldiers for much of the first century, and it is known as the Koenenlager after Constantin Koenen, the local archaeologist who excavated it systematically in the late nineteenth century. His work revealed the layout of an entire legionary camp, with headquarters, barracks, granaries and a hospital, and it became a model for Roman military archaeology. The site is part of the Lower German Limes, listed by UNESCO in 2021.
Read the complete Neuss-Koenenlager write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Neuss-Koenenlager comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 2.
Kottenforst is the name of a forest, but on the ride it is a long, patient place to be. This is the southern end of that great woodland ridge above Bonn, and the Wattendorfer Allee is one of the straight, wide avenues driven through it in the eighteenth century for the Electors of Cologne. The avenues radiate from older hunting points, and they still run dead straight for kilometres, so that from the right spot you can look down a green corridor that ends in a pinprick of light.
Read the complete Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
At least about 128 km into the recorded legs you reach Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 2. Next is Kottenforst Süd | Villiper Bach.
South of Bonn, between the Rhine and the Eifel foothills, the Kottenforst is a big forest that most people drive around and few really enter. For centuries it was a hunting forest of the Electors of Cologne, who ran straight rides through the trees for their parties, and some of those long avenues survive as forest tracks. Oak and beech dominate, with ponds and damp hollows where the Villiper Bach, a small stream, begins its journey toward the Rhine. In spring the floor is carpeted with wood anemones, and in autumn the leaf litter smells sharp and sweet.
Read the complete Kottenforst Süd | Villiper Bach write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kottenforst Süd | Villiper Bach, about halfway. Next is Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 1.
The Kottenforst is a big, flat-topped wooded ridge south-west of Bonn, an island of oak and hornbeam in a landscape of fields and commuter towns. It was a hunting forest of the Electors of Cologne, and the straight avenues that cut through it, still named Allee, were laid out in the eighteenth century so that a hunting party could ride after game, or follow falcons, in a precise geometric pattern. Elector Clemens August, who built the Augustusburg palace at Brühl and the little hunting lodge of Falkenlust beside it, loved heron hunting with falcons, and the avenues were part of that grand and slightly absurd game.
Read the complete Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 1 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 1 sits at 133 km, about halfway. Next is back through Kottenforst Süd | Villiper Bach.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kottenforst Süd | Villiper Bach write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kottenforst Süd | Villiper Bach comes up about 168 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 182 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 2. Next is back through Neuss-Koenenlager.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Neuss-Koenenlager write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Neuss-Koenenlager, late in the day. Next is Cologne.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cologne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 310 km.
Cologne → Neuss-Koenenlager is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Neuss-Koenenlager → Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 2 is 92 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Kottenforst Süd | Wattendorfer Allee 2 → back through Neuss-Koenenlager is 92 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Neuss-Koenenlager → Cologne is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.