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.
From Stuttgart it runs 418 km to Stuttgart; allow about 7 h 12 of riding. The stops in between: Hamberg Ditch, Fort site and civil settlement of Welheim, Fort site and civil settlement of Welzheim and Hochenacker Pond. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Stuttgart lies in a bowl, and everyone who lives there knows it. The city climbs out of the Neckar valley into steep hillsides covered with vineyards, so that you can ride from a central square and be among grapevines within ten minutes. The cauldron shape, known locally as the Talkessel, traps heat and air in summer, but it also gives the city its distinct character, with staircases called Stäffele running up the slopes and villas hanging on the hillsides. It is also, for motorcyclists, a place with unusual pedigree: this is where Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built an early motorcycle in 1885, a wooden contraption with a petrol engine often called the first of its kind.
Read the complete Stuttgart write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stuttgart is where the day begins. Next is Hamberg Ditch.
Maulbronn is a small town in the folded country where the Kraichgau meets the Stromberg hills, and its Cistercian monastery is the best-preserved medieval monastery north of the Alps. The Hamberg ditch belongs to a very different part of the story, the hydrology that kept the monks fed and powered. The Cistercians were famous engineers, and at Maulbronn they dug ditches, built dams and shaped ponds so that the water supply could drive mills, fill fish ponds and flush drains. Parts of this system still survive in the surrounding woods, and UNESCO included the monastery and its water works in the 1993 listing.
Read the complete Hamberg Ditch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hamberg Ditch comes up about 44 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fort site and civil settlement of Welheim-.
Welzheim sits up in the Swabian-Franconian Forest, a rolling upland of spruce, beech, deep stream valleys and old sawmills east of Stuttgart, and the Romans chose it for the same reason the forest still feels remote today: it was the edge. The Upper German-Raetian Limes ran dead straight through these woods, and Welzheim had not one fort but two, an east and a west fort, with a civilian settlement of traders, craftsmen and soldiers' families packed around them. The east fort has a reconstructed gate and a small archaeological park that gives you a good sense of scale, and the whole frontier line is part of a UNESCO site.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Welheim- write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 127 km into the recorded legs you reach Fort site and civil settlement of Welheim-. Next is Fort site and civil settlement of Welzheim.
Welzheim had not one but two Roman forts, and that alone tells you how seriously the frontier was taken in the Swabian Forest. The larger west fort held a cavalry unit, while the smaller east fort, now an archaeological park on the edge of town, housed an auxiliary infantry detachment. At the east fort the west gate has been rebuilt to its full height, and standing in front of it you get a rare sense of scale that low foundations never give. Around both forts lay the civil settlement, the vicus, with workshops, taverns and homes.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Welzheim write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort site and civil settlement of Welzheim, about halfway. Next is Hochenacker Pond.
Hermann Hesse ran away from Maulbronn after seven months. He was fourteen, a pupil at the Protestant seminary housed in the old monastery, and one day in 1892 he walked out and was found a day later in a field, cold and hungry. He later turned the experience into his novel Beneath the Wheel, and the monastery has not forgotten. The seminary buildings are still a school, and the cloister is among the best-preserved medieval monasteries in Germany, listed by UNESCO since 1993. Johannes Kepler and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin also studied here, which tells you the standard.
Read the complete Hochenacker Pond write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hochenacker Pond sits at 210 km, about halfway. Next is back through Fort site and civil settlement of Welzheim.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Welzheim write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Welzheim comes up about 293 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Fort site and civil settlement of Welheim-.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Welheim- write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 294 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Fort site and civil settlement of Welheim-. Next is back through Hamberg Ditch.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hamberg Ditch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hamberg Ditch, late in the day. Next is Stuttgart.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stuttgart write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 418 km.
Stuttgart → Hamberg Ditch is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hamberg Ditch → Fort site and civil settlement of Welheim- is 83 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Fort site and civil settlement of Welzheim → Hochenacker Pond is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Hochenacker Pond → back through Fort site and civil settlement of Welzheim is 83 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Welheim- → back through Hamberg Ditch is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Hamberg Ditch → Stuttgart is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.