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 232 km loop that starts and ends near Madrid, about 3 h 10 of riding. It goes by way of El Escorial and Toledo. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. Long stretches are under trees.
Madrid sits higher than any other capital in the European Union, around six hundred and fifty metres above the sea, on a dry plateau with the Sierra de Guadarrama as a blue-white wall to the north. That height explains the light, which is hard and clear, and the winters, which can be sharp, and the habit of the place, which is to stay up very late. The city was a modest town until 1561, when Philip II moved his court here, more or less because it was in the middle of Spain, and it has been the capital ever since. Everything grand about the centre, the palace, the Plaza Mayor and the Prado, grew out of that decision.
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.
Return visit. Read the place description above.