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.
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 Yerevan it runs 46 km to Yerevan; allow about 1 h 02 of riding. On the way it passes Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin, Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C, Cathedral and Churches of Echmiatsin and t and back through Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,700 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
For 19 km this is Armenia Selim Pass and Lake Sevan Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
2 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it. Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through.
Yerevan is a pink city. The stone that built it is volcanic tuff, in shades from rose to apricot to grey, and when the evening light hits the apartment blocks and the opera house it glows as if lit from inside. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, founded as the fortress of Erebuni in 782 BC, and yet most of what you see was laid out in the Soviet years by the architect Alexander Tamanian, in a ring plan around a great central square. A little over a million people live here, about a third of the country, and the capital feels like the engine room of Armenia.
Read the complete Yerevan write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yerevan is where the day begins. Next is Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin.
Zvartnots is a ruin with a great deal of ghost left in it. The name means roughly the temple of the celestial angels, and it was built in the seventh century by the Armenian Catholicos Nerses III, who wanted a church of astonishing size and shape: a round, three-storey building rising from a cross-shaped plan, with a high central dome and a ring of columns. For a few centuries it dominated this plain between the Hrazdan river and the old capital of Vagharshapat. Then it collapsed, probably in an earthquake some time before the tenth century, and the stones lay forgotten under a mound until archaeologists dug them out in the early twentieth century.
Read the complete Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin comes up 6 km in. Next is Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C, 6 km on.
This stop is for the stone itself. Hripsime church is one of the oldest buildings in Armenia still standing as it was built: a compact, square-planned church topped by a drum and a conical dome, finished in 618 under the Catholicos Komitas, and so well proportioned that architects have been copying the plan for fourteen centuries. It sits in a green enclosure on the western side of Vagharshapat, a short ride from the cathedral at Echmiatsin, and its tuff walls have gone the colour of dark honey.
Read the complete Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
At least 17 km in you reach Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C, about halfway. Next is Cathedral and Churches of Echmiatsin and t.
Armenians call this the Mother See, and the phrase is meant literally: Echmiatsin is the spiritual centre of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the seat of the Catholicos, the place the faith is governed from. The cathedral stands on the edge of Vagharshapat, a flat town of about forty thousand on the Ararat plain west of Yerevan. Tradition holds that Gregory the Illuminator, after the king converted around the year 301, saw a vision of Christ descending with a golden hammer to mark where the church should rise. That vision gave the place its name: Echmiatsin means the descent of the only-begotten. The present building has been rebuilt and added to many times, but its bones date to the fifth century and the core to even earlier.
Read the complete Cathedral and Churches of Echmiatsin and t write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cathedral and Churches of Echmiatsin and t sits at 24 km, about halfway. Next is back through Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C, 6 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C comes up 30 km in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
36 km in you reach back through Saint Hripsimeh Church and St. Shoghakat C. Next is back through Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin, late in the day. Next is Yerevan.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Yerevan write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 46 km.
Yerevan → Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Archaeological site of Zvartnots with ruin → Yerevan is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.