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.
248 km from Toledo to Toledo, about 3 h 36 of riding. It goes by way of Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante, Monastery and Site of the Escurial and back through Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Toledo sits inside a nearly closed loop of the Tagus, a granite gorge that makes the old city a natural fortress, and the first sight of it from the ring road is one that few riders forget. The Carretera de Circunvalación runs around the opposite bank, and its lay-bys and viewpoints, especially the Mirador del Valle, give the classic view: the Alcázar and cathedral on the skyline, the Alcántara bridge below, and the river shining in the gorge. El Greco painted that same view in the early seventeenth century, with stormy skies, and it is not hard to see why.
Read the complete High point near Toledo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Toledo is where the day begins. Next is Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro.
Riding into the centre of Madrid is not anyone's idea of a scenic route, but the Paseo del Prado makes up for the traffic. This broad, tree-lined boulevard, laid out in the eighteenth century under Charles III as a showpiece of the Enlightenment, runs from the Cibeles fountain past Neptune to the Atocha station, and along it stand three of the greatest art museums in the world: the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and, a short walk away, the Reina Sofía with Picasso's Guernica. Behind the Prado, the Buen Retiro park spreads over more than a hundred hectares of gardens, lakes and avenues, once the grounds of a royal palace. In 2021 UNESCO listed the ensemble as the Landscape of Light, a recognition of the boulevard and the park as a planned urban landscape devoted to science, art and leisure.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro comes up 38 km in. Next is Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
77 km in you reach Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro. 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 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 sits at 153 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 191 km in. Next is back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
230 km in you reach back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro. Next is back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, late in the day. Next is Toledo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete High point near Toledo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 248 km.
Toledo → Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro is 92 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro → Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Subsidiary building \La Casita del Infante → back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro → Toledo is 92 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.