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 Aranjuez it runs 332 km to Aranjuez; allow about 5 h 15 of riding. On the way it passes University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá, Monastery and Site of the Escurial and back through University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Aranjuez is the green oasis of the dry Madrid plain, a royal town built where the Tagus and the Jarama rivers meet and where Spanish kings came every spring to escape the court. The palace, largely an eighteenth-century Bourbon creation, faces broad avenues and formal gardens, and the riverside parks of the Jardín de la Isla and the Jardín del Príncipe stretch for kilometres along the water, with fountains, statues, an artificial island and tall old trees. In 2001 UNESCO listed the whole thing as a cultural landscape, recognising how the kings shaped nature, agriculture and town planning into a single designed whole.
Read the complete Aranjuez Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Aranjuez Cultural Landscape is where the day begins. Next is University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá.
Alcalá de Henares has a talent for producing writers. Miguel de Cervantes was born here in 1547, and a house museum in the old town commemorates him. The university, founded by Cardinal Cisneros in 1499, was one of the earliest planned university towns in Europe and a model for institutions in the Americas, and its Renaissance and Baroque buildings, with their stone façades and courtyards, are the core of the UNESCO listing that Alcalá received in 1998 for its university and historic precinct. The Paraninfo, the ceremonial hall, is where the Cervantes Prize is presented each year.
Read the complete University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá comes up about 87 km into the recorded legs. Next is Monastery and Site of the Escurial.
Philip II began the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in 1563 and it was finished in 1584, a short time for a building of its size. It sits on the southern slope of the Sierra de Guadarrama, about fifty kilometres north-west of Madrid, and the two towns beside it, San Lorenzo de El Escorial and El Escorial, are small, tidy and slightly prosperous, living partly off the building that gave them their name.
Read the complete Monastery and Site of the Escurial write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 169 km into the recorded legs you reach Monastery and Site of the Escurial. Next is back through University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá, late in the day. Next is Aranjuez Cultural Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Aranjuez Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Aranjuez Cultural Landscape. That is the ride.
Aranjuez Cultural Landscape → University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá is 87 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá → Monastery and Site of the Escurial is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Monastery and Site of the Escurial → back through University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá is 77 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá → Aranjuez Cultural Landscape is 86 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.