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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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Milan it runs 418 km to Milan; allow about 6 h 12 of riding. It goes by way of Crespi d'Adda, The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c, Venetian Works of Defence between the 16th and back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Milan does not try to charm you, and that is part of its charm. It is Italy's business capital, a city of fashion, finance and design that works hard and dresses well. At the centre stands the Duomo, a Gothic cathedral begun in 1386 and not finished for about five centuries, a forest of white marble spires and statues, and you can climb onto the roof among them. Beside it, the glass-roofed Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is a nineteenth-century shopping arcade, and beyond it La Scala opera house.
Read the complete Milan write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Milan is where the day begins. Next is Crespi d'Adda.
Crespi d'Adda is a whole company town, built from 1878 by the Crespi family of cotton manufacturers on a bend of the Adda river where the water could turn their turbines. Around the mill they laid out rows of neat houses with gardens for the workers, larger villas for the managers, a school, a church that copies the Renaissance church of Santa Maria di Piazza in Busto Arsizio, a washhouse, a hospital, and, on a slight rise at the end of the main street, a cemetery with a strange, almost Mayan-looking mausoleum for the family. It was a paternalistic utopia in which the company looked after its workers from cradle to grave, and UNESCO listed it in 1995 as one of the best-preserved examples of its kind in Europe.
Read the complete Crespi d'Adda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Crespi d'Adda comes up 50 km in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Crespi d'Adda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
100 km in you reach Crespi d'Adda. Next is The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c.
The Lombards get a bad press in most history books, which tend to treat them as the barbarians who arrived in Italy in 568 and broke what was left of Roman order. Castelseprio tells a subtler story. On a wooded spur above the Olona valley, north-west of Milan, stand the ruins of a late Roman and Lombard castrum, a fortified town that controlled the road between the plain and the Alpine lakes, and just outside its walls is the little church of Santa Maria foris portas, whose frescoes are among the most mysterious and beautiful paintings of early medieval Europe. Down by the river, the stout stone Torba tower, later part of a Benedictine nunnery, completes the group. Together they form one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of the Lombards in Italy.
Read the complete The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c, about halfway. Next is Venetian Works of Defence between the 16th.
Bergamo is two cities: the busy modern town on the plain, and the Città Alta on the hill above, enclosed by massive walls built by the Republic of Venice between 1561 and 1588. Bergamo was then the westernmost outpost of Venice's mainland territory, facing the Spanish-ruled Duchy of Milan, and the walls, more than five kilometres long, were designed to withstand artillery, with bastions, platforms and gates. They were never seriously tested in battle, which is why they are so well preserved. In 2017 UNESCO listed them, together with other Venetian fortifications in Italy, Croatia and Montenegro, as the Venetian Works of Defence.
Read the complete Venetian Works of Defence between the 16th write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Venetian Works of Defence between the 16th sits at 200 km, about halfway. Next is back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c comes up 250 km in. Next is back through Crespi d'Adda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Crespi d'Adda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
300 km in you reach back through Crespi d'Adda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Crespi d'Adda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Crespi d'Adda, late in the day. Next is Milan.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Milan write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 418 km.
Milan → Crespi d'Adda is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Crespi d'Adda → The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c is 74 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c → Venetian Works of Defence between the 16th is 84 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Venetian Works of Defence between the 16th → back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c is 84 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c → back through Crespi d'Adda is 74 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Crespi d'Adda → Milan is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.