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 327 km round trip from City Center - roughly 4 h 57 in the saddle. It goes by way of Monastery and Site of the Escurial, Palace, Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante and Aranjuez Cultural Landscape. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
1 km on Monastery and Site of the Escurial → Palace.
Madrid sits higher than any other capital in the European Union, around six hundred and fifty metres above the sea, on a dry plateau with the Sierra de Guadarrama as a blue-white wall to the north. That height explains the light, which is hard and clear, and the winters, which can be sharp, and the habit of the place, which is to stay up very late. The city was a modest town until 1561, when Philip II moved his court here, more or less because it was in the middle of Spain, and it has been the capital ever since. Everything grand about the centre, the palace, the Plaza Mayor and the Prado, grew out of that decision.
Read the complete Madrid write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madrid is where the day begins. Next is Monastery and Site of the Escurial.
Philip II began the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in 1563 and it was finished in 1584, a short time for a building of its size. It sits on the southern slope of the Sierra de Guadarrama, about fifty kilometres north-west of Madrid, and the two towns beside it, San Lorenzo de El Escorial and El Escorial, are small, tidy and slightly prosperous, living partly off the building that gave them their name.
Read the complete Monastery and Site of the Escurial write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monastery and Site of the Escurial comes up about 47 km into the recorded legs. Next is Palace.
Philip II wanted a monastery, a palace, a royal tomb and a college all in one building, and in the 1560s he got it, in the shadow of the Sierra de Guadarrama. The Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial took about twenty years to build, under the architects Juan de Herrera and Juan Bautista de Toledo, and it is made of pale grey granite, severe and symmetrical, with slate spires and almost no decoration outside. The king had vowed to build a monastery to St Lawrence after a victory over the French at St Quentin in 1557, and the plan of the building is said to echo the gridiron on which the saint was martyred.
Read the complete Palace write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 48 km into the recorded legs you reach Palace. Next is Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante.
Most people who come to San Lorenzo de El Escorial only see the monastery, that vast granite grid Philip II raised in the second half of the sixteenth century as palace, basilica, library and royal tomb all at once. A short walk below it, through terraced gardens and woodland, sits something far more human in scale. The Casita del Infante, also called the Casita de Arriba, was designed by Juan de Villanueva in the late eighteenth century for the Infante Gabriel, a son of Carlos III, as a place to retreat, play music and escape the endless etiquette of court. Its sibling, the Casita del Príncipe, lies down the hill near the town of El Escorial and was built for the future Carlos IV.
Read the complete Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante, about halfway. Next is Aranjuez Cultural Landscape.
Aranjuez is the green oasis of the dry Madrid plain, a royal town built where the Tagus and the Jarama rivers meet and where Spanish kings came every spring to escape the court. The palace, largely an eighteenth-century Bourbon creation, faces broad avenues and formal gardens, and the riverside parks of the Jardín de la Isla and the Jardín del Príncipe stretch for kilometres along the water, with fountains, statues, an artificial island and tall old trees. In 2001 UNESCO listed the whole thing as a cultural landscape, recognising how the kings shaped nature, agriculture and town planning into a single designed whole.
Read the complete Aranjuez Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Aranjuez Cultural Landscape sits at 162 km, about halfway. Next is back through Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante comes up about 281 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Palace.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Palace write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 282 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Palace. Next is back through Monastery and Site of the Escurial.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monastery and Site of the Escurial write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Monastery and Site of the Escurial, late in the day. Next is Madrid.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madrid write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 327 km.
Madrid → Monastery and Site of the Escurial is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante → Aranjuez Cultural Landscape is 114 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Aranjuez Cultural Landscape → back through Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante is 118 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Monastery and Site of the Escurial → Madrid is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.