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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Al Muharraq it runs 966 km to Al Muharraq; allow about 16 h 40 of riding. The stops in between: Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field, Al Zubarah Archaeological Site and back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field. It crosses from Bahrain into Qatar - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Muharraq's most famous export after pearls is probably football, and the Al-Alawi house stands in a quarter where every wall seems to have a team scarf hanging from it. The Muharraq club is one of the most successful in the country, with a loyal following, and on match days the cafés and lanes of the old town are noisy with argument and song. The people who live in the old merchant houses today are often the grandchildren of men who dived for pearls or traded them, and the town keeps a stubborn local identity separate from Manama, the capital across the water.
Read the complete Al-Alawi House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Al-Alawi House is where the day begins. Next is Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field.
Flat, pale and apparently empty, the central plain of Bahrain hides one of the oldest cemeteries on earth. Some four thousand years ago the island of Dilmun, as it was known to the Sumerians, buried its dead under thousands upon thousands of low stone mounds, and in places like Madinat Hamad and A'ali the mounds still stand in dense, grey fields. At one time there may have been several hundred thousand of them, which would have made Dilmun a famous necropolis in its day, and many have since been flattened by roads, housing and quarrying.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field comes up about 117 km into the recorded legs. Next is Al Zubarah Archaeological Site.
Out on the north-west coast of Qatar, where the desert slides into a shallow turquoise sea, stand the low ruins of Al Zubarah, once one of the busiest pearling and trading towns in the Gulf. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the town thrived on pearls dived from the oyster beds offshore, traded on to India, Persia and beyond. Then it declined, was abandoned in the early twentieth century, and the sand covered it. Archaeologists have since uncovered streets, houses, a souk, mosques and a long town wall running in an arc around the old harbour. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2013.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 483 km into the recorded legs you reach Al Zubarah Archaeological Site. Next is back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field, late in the day. Next is Al-Alawi House.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Al-Alawi House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Al-Alawi House. That is the ride.
Al-Alawi House → Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field is 117 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field → Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 366 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field is 366 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field → Al-Alawi House is 117 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.