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.
From Giza it runs 93 km to Giza; allow about 2 h 07 of riding. The stops in between: Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F, Site of Memphis and back through Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Cairo has a second city that most visitors never think about, a long ribbon of tombs on the southern flank of the old town known as the Qarafa, or City of the Dead. Families live in some of the funerary courtyards, there are shops and bakeries between the mausoleums, and in the middle of it all stands the tomb of Imam al-Shafi'i, the scholar who founded one of the four great schools of Sunni law and died in Egypt in 820. The big domed mausoleum you see today was raised in 1211 by the Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil, and the dome carries a bronze boat-shaped ornament on top that you can spot from surprising distances.
Read the complete Al-Imam ash-Shaf'i Necropolis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Al-Imam ash-Shaf'i Necropolis is where the day begins. Next is Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F.
This is Giza and the great Old Kingdom necropolis, the first place on any list of Egypt, and a hard one to write about without sounding like a postcard. Memphis was the capital of the early pharaohs, on the Nile just south of modern Cairo, and the pyramid fields stretch along the desert edge from Giza down through Saqqara and Dahshur. The Great Pyramid was built for Khufu around 2560 BC and was the tallest man-made structure on earth for several thousand years. The sheer age is the thing that gets you: when the Greeks and Romans visited as tourists, these were already ancient.
Read the complete Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F comes up about 19 km into the recorded legs. Next is Site of Memphis.
Memphis was the first capital of a unified Egypt, or so tradition says, and for much of the Old Kingdom it was the centre of the world's most ordered state. Today there is little of it to see, because the city was built of mud brick and stripped for stone, and the Nile shifted away. What remains is a quiet area of palm groves and fields near the village of Mit Rahina, south of Cairo, where an open-air museum shows a few fragments of the capital that once stretched for kilometres along the river.
Read the complete Site of Memphis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 51 km into the recorded legs you reach Site of Memphis. Next is back through Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F, late in the day. Next is Al-Imam ash-Shaf'i Necropolis.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Al-Imam ash-Shaf'i Necropolis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Al-Imam ash-Shaf'i Necropolis. That is the ride.
Al-Imam ash-Shaf'i Necropolis → Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F → Site of Memphis is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Site of Memphis → back through Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Memphis and its Necropolis - the Pyramid F → Al-Imam ash-Shaf'i Necropolis is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.