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.
194 km from Vilafranca del Penedès to Vilafranca del Penedès, about 3 h 09 of riding. The stops in between: Crypt at the Colònia Güell, La Pedra de les Orenetes and back through Crypt at the Colònia Güell. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 48 km this is Monserrat Mountain Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The Penedès is wine country, and the landscape around Vilafranca del Penedès is a patchwork of vineyards rolling away toward the Montserrat massif in the north and the limestone hills of the Garraf in the south. Abric de Can Castellví is a small rock shelter in this landscape, one of the many sites of Levantine and schematic rock art scattered across Catalonia and included in the UNESCO serial site of the rock art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula. Like many such sites, it is modest in appearance, a hollow in the rock where faint painted figures have survived thousands of years, and access is often limited to protect the art.
Read the complete Abric de Can Castellvi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Abric de Can Castellví is where the day begins. Next is Crypt at the Colònia Güell.
Few people ride out of Barcelona expecting to find Gaudí in a mill village, but that is exactly what waits at Santa Coloma de Cervelló, a short hop up the Llobregat from Sant Boi. The Colònia Güell was a textile colony founded by the industrialist Eusebi Güell, who moved his cotton works out of the city in the 1890s and built housing, a school, shops and a theatre for the workers around the factory. He asked his friend Antoni Gaudí for a church. Gaudí spent about ten years on the design and its foundations, and when money and the Güell family's enthusiasm ran out around 1914, only the lower level had been finished. That crypt is what you come to see.
Read the complete Crypt at the Colònia Güell write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Crypt at the Colònia Güell comes up about 50 km into the recorded legs. Next is La Pedra de les Orenetes.
La Pedra de les Orenetes, the Swallows' Stone, is a granite boulder in the hills above La Roca del Vallès, and its surface is covered with small carved hollows and other marks left by people in prehistory. Nobody knows exactly what they meant; such engraved rocks are found across Catalonia, and theories range from ritual offerings to maps of the stars. The rock sits among cork oaks and pines in the Serralada Litoral, the coastal range that separates the Vallès plain from the sea, and the walk to reach it is short and pleasant, through scented forest with views over the plain.
Read the complete La Pedra de les Orenetes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 98 km into the recorded legs you reach La Pedra de les Orenetes. Next is back through Crypt at the Colònia Güell.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Crypt at the Colònia Güell write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Crypt at the Colònia Güell, late in the day. Next is Abric de Can Castellvi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abric de Can Castellvi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Abric de Can Castellvi. That is the ride.
Abric de Can Castellví → Crypt at the Colònia Güell is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Crypt at the Colònia Güell → La Pedra de les Orenetes is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Pedra de les Orenetes → back through Crypt at the Colònia Güell is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Crypt at the Colònia Güell → Abric de Can Castellvi is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.