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 282 km round trip from Seongnam-si - roughly 4 h 58 in the saddle. The stops in between: Hwaseong Fortress, Seosan Getbol, Kanghwa Dolmen Sites and back through Seosan Getbol. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Seoul is a city of ten million, and a fortress sits just above its south-eastern edge. Namhansanseong is what the ride calls Area 1, and it is where the Joseon kings used to run when invaders arrived. The wall, about twelve kilometres of stone and earth following the ridge line, was built in the early seventeenth century on the foundations of older fortifications, and the whole enclosure sits on Mount Namhan, a granite hill just beyond Seongnam. It was listed by UNESCO in 2014.
Read the complete Area 1 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Area 1 is where the day begins. Next is Hwaseong Fortress.
Hwaseong is a love letter from a son to his father, written in stone. In 1762, Crown Prince Sado was locked in a rice chest by his own father, King Yeongjo, and left to die, one of the darkest episodes in Korean royal history. His son, who became King Jeongjo, never forgot, and he moved his father's tomb to a site near Suwon and built a grand fortress there, completed in 1796, intended perhaps as a new capital. The engineer and scholar Jeong Yak-yong used cranes and pulleys to speed up construction, and the walls, gates, towers and bastions combine Korean, Chinese and Western ideas of fortification. UNESCO listed it in 1997.
Read the complete Hwaseong Fortress write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hwaseong Fortress comes up about 39 km into the recorded legs. Next is Seosan Getbol.
Korea's west coast has some of the largest tides on earth. Twice a day the Yellow Sea pulls back for kilometres, exposing vast shining mud flats, the getbol, laced with channels and alive with crabs, mudskippers, worms and shellfish. UNESCO has listed a series of these Korean tidal flats for their extraordinary biodiversity and for the millions of migratory shorebirds that stop here to feed on their way between Siberia and Australia.
Read the complete Seosan Getbol write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 97 km into the recorded legs you reach Seosan Getbol. Next is Kanghwa Dolmen Sites.
Ganghwa Island lies in the mouth of the Han River, just north-west of Seoul and Incheon, and on a clear day you can look across a narrow channel of tidal water straight into North Korea. The town of Kaesong is barely twenty-five kilometres away. That closeness gives the island an edge, with watch posts and fences along parts of the shore, but its fame is much older. The Ganghwa dolmens, together with those at Gochang and Hwasun in the south, were listed by UNESCO in 2000, and Korea holds a remarkable share of all the dolmens known in the world.
Read the complete Kanghwa Dolmen Sites write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kanghwa Dolmen Sites, about halfway. Next is back through Seosan Getbol.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Seosan Getbol write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Seosan Getbol sits at 189 km, about halfway. Next is back through Hwaseong Fortress.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hwaseong Fortress write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hwaseong Fortress comes up about 246 km into the recorded legs. Next is Area 1.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Area 1 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Area 1 closes the day.
Area 1 → Hwaseong Fortress is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hwaseong Fortress → Seosan Getbol is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seosan Getbol → Kanghwa Dolmen Sites is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kanghwa Dolmen Sites → back through Seosan Getbol is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Seosan Getbol → back through Hwaseong Fortress is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hwaseong Fortress → Area 1 is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.