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 248 km round trip from Ronda - roughly 4 h 44 in the saddle. The stops in between: El Torcal de Antequera, The Menga Dolmen and The Viera Dolmen, Antequera Dolmens Site and Tholos of El Romeral. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Ronda is built on both sides of a gorge, and nobody quite believes it until they stand on the bridge. The Tajo, a cleft some hundred metres deep, cuts the town in two, and the Guadalevín river runs along its bottom. The Puente Nuevo, a tall stone bridge finished in the late eighteenth century after earlier collapses, joins the old Moorish quarter to the newer town on the other side, and the views from the viewpoints around it, down the cliff and out over the plain, are among the best in Andalusia.
Read the complete Ronda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ronda is where the day begins. Next is El Torcal de Antequera.
El Torcal looks like a city that someone has abandoned to the weather. Great stacks of grey limestone, worn into the shapes of piled plates, mushrooms and heads, rise from a bare plateau high above Antequera, and the whole thing was once seabed. The rock is Jurassic, laid down under warm water around 150 million years ago, then lifted and eaten away by rain and frost until the layered beds were cut into this extraordinary maze. It is a karst landscape, one of the finest in Europe, and part of the Antequera World Heritage listing.
Read the complete El Torcal de Antequera write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
El Torcal de Antequera comes up about 102 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Menga Dolmen and The Viera Dolmen.
Antequera sits in the middle of Andalusia like a coin in a pocket, and the two great dolmens stand on its northern edge, barely more than a kilometre from the centre. Menga and Viera were built more than five thousand years ago by farming people who dragged enormous blocks of stone into place, and Menga is one of the biggest megalithic chambers in Europe, with a roof of slabs that weigh many tonnes each. You walk into a long corridor of stone, with a mound of earth above, and the scale of it hits you before any explanation does.
Read the complete The Menga Dolmen and The Viera Dolmen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
At least about 120 km into the recorded legs you reach The Menga Dolmen and The Viera Dolmen. Next is Antequera Dolmens Site.
A visitor's centre, some car parks, a long low mound and a view across a plain of wheat: the Antequera dolmens site does not look like much from the approach road, and then you step inside Menga and your sense of proportion rearranges itself. This stop is the formal gateway to the complex, a mile or so from the old town, and from here you can see the shape of the landscape that the prehistoric builders chose, with the strange rocky mountain called the Peña de los Enamorados rising to the northeast.
Read the complete Antequera Dolmens Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Antequera Dolmens Site, about halfway. Next is Tholos of El Romeral.
Just outside Antequera, a low grassy mound hides one of Europe's more unusual prehistoric chambers. The Tholos of El Romeral is a Bronze Age burial, roughly four thousand years old, built from carefully fitted stone slabs that rise in a corbelled dome above a long entrance corridor. Unlike its neighbours, the huge Neolithic dolmens of Menga and Viera, it uses a dry-stone technique closer to what you find in the eastern Mediterranean, so archaeologists argue about where the builders learned it. All three belong to the Antequera Dolmens Site, listed by UNESCO in 2016 partly because the landscape itself seems to be part of the design.
Read the complete Tholos of El Romeral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tholos of El Romeral sits at 93 km, about halfway. Next is back through Antequera Dolmens Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Antequera Dolmens Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Antequera Dolmens Site comes up about 127 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through The Menga Dolmen and The Viera Dolmen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Menga Dolmen and The Viera Dolmen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 128 km into the recorded legs you reach back through The Menga Dolmen and The Viera Dolmen. Next is back through El Torcal de Antequera.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete El Torcal de Antequera write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through El Torcal de Antequera, late in the day. Next is Ronda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ronda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 248 km.
Ronda → El Torcal de Antequera is 102 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
El Torcal de Antequera → The Menga Dolmen and The Viera Dolmen is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Menga Dolmen and The Viera Dolmen → back through El Torcal de Antequera is 15 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through El Torcal de Antequera → Ronda is 105 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.