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 340 km round trip from Zaragoza - roughly 5 h 18 in the saddle. On the way it passes Iglesia de Santa María, Cueva de moncín I and back through Iglesia de Santa María. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Zaragoza is a city of brick. In the centuries after the Christian conquest of 1118, the Muslim craftsmen who remained and their descendants, the Mudéjars, built churches and towers across Aragon using brick, glazed tile and decorative patterns of geometric inlay, and the result is a style found nowhere else. In Zaragoza the brick apses and towers of the old churches, with their blind arcades and zigzag courses, are the best examples, and the Mudéjar architecture of Aragon is a World Heritage listing, first awarded in 1986 and extended in 2001. The apse at this stop is a piece of that heritage.
Read the complete Abside write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Abside is where the day begins. Next is Iglesia de Santa María.
Somewhere in the folds of the Sierra de Algairén, south-west of Zaragoza, a bell tower pokes up above a cluster of ochre roofs, and that is your Iglesia de Santa María. Half the villages of Aragon have a church of that name, and this one does the job the others do: it marks the middle of a small place where the shop, the bar and the plaza all orbit the same square of stone. The nearest neighbours on the map are Cosuenda, Almonacid de la Sierra and Alpartir, each a few hundred souls, each about nine kilometres off.
Read the complete Iglesia de Santa María write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Iglesia de Santa María comes up about 76 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cueva de moncín I.
Borja is a town of four thousand people in the Ebro valley, but its name is known far beyond Spain, because it is the origin of the Borgia family. Rodrigo Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI, took his surname from this place, and the family's later fame in Italy, for poison, politics and portraits, makes a curious footnote to a quiet farming town. More recently, Borja became famous for a fresco. In 2012, an elderly parishioner's attempt to restore a painting of Christ in the nearby Sanctuary of Mercy turned it into an internet sensation, and visitors have come to see it ever since.
Read the complete Cueva de moncín I write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 164 km into the recorded legs you reach Cueva de moncín I. Next is back through Iglesia de Santa María.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Iglesia de Santa María write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Iglesia de Santa María, late in the day. Next is Abside.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abside write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Abside. That is the ride.
Abside → Iglesia de Santa María is 76 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Iglesia de Santa María → Cueva de moncín I is 88 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Cueva de moncín I → back through Iglesia de Santa María is 99 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Iglesia de Santa María → Abside is 77 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.