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 379 km round trip from Heidelberg - roughly 5 h 59 in the saddle. On the way it passes Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30, Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn, Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur and Watchtower WP 7/37. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Heidelberg is the place that German Romantics made famous and Mark Twain made funny. The Neckar comes out of its wooded valley here and slips past a steep old town, a stone bridge with a gate, and above everything the red sandstone ruins of the castle. Visitors have been climbing up to look at it since the early nineteenth century, when poets and painters arrived and decided it was the most beautiful ruin in Germany. The damage was done by French troops in the 1680s and 1690s, in a war of succession, and a lightning strike finished the job later, so it was never a romantic wreck by design.
Read the complete Heidelberg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Heidelberg is where the day begins. Next is Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30.
Osterburken is the place on the German Limes where you really can see the Romans in the town. The fort here sat on the frontier in the Bauland, a hilly farming district between the Odenwald and the Neckar, and the museum in the town houses the remains of the fort baths and a rare relief of the god Mithras, an eastern cult favoured by soldiers, whose followers met in small, dark temples to share a sacred meal. The watchtowers 8/29 and 8/30 stand out in the fields a short distance away, part of the line that ran straight over the hills.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30 comes up about 95 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn.
Walldürn sits on the high, rolling plateau where the Odenwald meets the Bauland, a gentle landscape of fields, woods and small towns in the northeast of Baden-Württemberg. The Romans came here in the second century AD, when the Upper German Limes was pushed forward to a new line running almost straight through the countryside, and they built a small fort at Walldürn with a civil settlement beside it, where soldiers' families, traders and craftsmen lived. The remains of a bath house have been excavated and conserved, and the line of the frontier, with its watchtowers and palisade, runs nearby. The Upper German-Raetian Limes, more than five hundred kilometres long, became a UNESCO site in 2005.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 120 km into the recorded legs you reach Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn. Next is Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur.
For a stretch of about fifty kilometres the Romans let the River Main do the work of a wall. Between Miltenberg and Grosskrotzenburg, the frontier of the Upper Germanic Limes followed the river instead of running as a palisade across country, and a chain of forts sat along its west bank. Trennfurt, a village now part of Klingenberg am Main, was one of them: a fort with its civilian settlement, the vicus, where traders, craftsmen and soldiers' families lived. It is part of the UNESCO Frontiers of the Roman Empire, and as with many Limes sites, most of what survives lies under fields and gardens rather than standing proud.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur, about halfway. Next is Watchtower WP 7/37.
The Romans liked straight lines, and nowhere more than here. On the edge of Walldürn, in the hilly country between the Odenwald and the Tauber valley, runs the course of the Upper Germanic-Raetian Limes, the frontier wall that marked the edge of the Roman Empire across what is now southern Germany. Watchtower WP 7/37 is one of hundreds of small posts that lined it, each within sight of the next, so that signals could be passed along the frontier. The Limes here famously runs almost dead straight for many kilometres, regardless of hills and valleys, a statement of Roman confidence and surveying skill.
Read the complete Watchtower WP 7/37 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtower WP 7/37 sits at 169 km, about halfway. Next is back through Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur comes up about 223 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 257 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn. Next is back through Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30, late in the day. Next is Heidelberg.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Heidelberg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 379 km.
Heidelberg → Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30 is 95 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30 → Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn → Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur → Watchtower WP 7/37 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtower WP 7/37 → back through Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Trennfur → back through Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Walldürn → back through Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30 is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Watchtowers WP 8/29 to 8/30 → Heidelberg is 93 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.