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 proper escape from New York with roads worth waking up for. Out of Englewood Cliffs and back again: 445 km, roughly 7 h 52 in the saddle. On the way it passes Scenic stretch near Kings Point, near Rumson and Bath Beach. The climb of the day is in Woodmere. The line favours views over speed.
Next is Scenic stretch near Kings Point.
Scenic stretch near Kings Point comes up about 43 km into the recorded legs. Next is High point in Woodmere.
This is where the road stops climbing. Next is Photo stop near Rumson.
Photo stop near Rumson, about halfway. Next is Bear Mountain and Harriman Dawn checkpoint 8.
Bath Beach is a small neighbourhood on the south-west shore of Brooklyn, facing Gravesend Bay, and it got its name in the nineteenth century, when it was a seaside resort for wealthy New Yorkers, modelled on the English spa town of Bath. The resort is long gone, but the bay is still there, with a promenade along the water and views of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, its great towers soaring over the entrance to New York Harbor.
Read the complete Bath Beach write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Bear Mountain and Harriman Dawn checkpoint 8. That is the ride. Next is Food stop in Metuchen.
Food stop in Metuchen is where this day stops to eat. Next is New York / Hudson Valley rides return.
The New Jersey Highlands are the surprise of the state for anyone who only knows it from the Turnpike. North-west of Boonton the land buckles into long wooded ridges of old granite and gneiss, with lakes in every hollow, rocky streams and roads that wriggle through forest for kilometre after kilometre. Boonton, Kinnelon and Butler sit on the edge of this country, small towns of seven to ten thousand people each, and they make a natural pause on the road back from Bear Mountain.
Read the complete Near Boonton, on the way back write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 377 km into the recorded legs you reach New York / Hudson Valley rides return. Next is Back to Bear Mountain.
Across the Hudson from upper Manhattan, the river runs below a long wall of dark rock known as the Palisades, a cliff of volcanic diabase that rises up to about five hundred feet and runs for twenty miles along the New Jersey side. Englewood Cliffs sits on top, among trees and large houses, with the George Washington Bridge nearby, and this is the southern end of a very good motorcycle road. It was saved from quarrying by a conservation movement in the early twentieth century, and the land became part of Palisades Interstate Park.
Read the complete Bear Mountain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to Bear Mountain. That is the ride.
This Scenic stretch near Kings Point → High point in Woodmere stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.
Photo stop near Rumson → Bath Beach is the technical section. Hairpins, gradients and mixed traffic can stack up quickly; use low drama inputs, stay wide of centre lines and expect buses or riders appearing exactly where optimism says they will not.
Food stop in Metuchen → Near Boonton, on the way back can flow quickly, but only if you keep village limits and junction sightlines sacred. Fast connectors are where rides get untidy when fatigue creeps in.