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 Baalbek it runs 446 km to Baalbek; allow about 6 h 17 of riding. It goes by way of Byblos, Qalaat al-Chakif and back through Byblos. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,750 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
The stones of Baalbek are so big that for centuries people said giants or djinn must have moved them. In the trilithon, part of the foundation of the temple of Jupiter, three limestone blocks each weigh around eight hundred tonnes, and in the quarry nearby lie even larger blocks, including the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, which were cut but never moved. The Romans called the city Heliopolis, the city of the sun, and built here one of the largest temple complexes of their empire over a period of two centuries. Six columns of the temple of Jupiter still stand, about twenty metres tall, and the temple of Bacchus next to it is one of the best-preserved Roman temples anywhere, with richly carved ceilings and doorways.
Read the complete Baalbek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Baalbek is where the day begins. Next is Byblos.
Byblos, known to the Lebanese as Jbeil, is one of the contenders for the title of oldest continuously inhabited town on the planet. People have lived on this little headland above the Mediterranean for around seven thousand years, and the Phoenician city here was a great trading port, sending cedar wood from the mountains to Egypt and taking papyrus in return. The Greeks named the city after the papyrus, byblos, and from that word comes the word Bible. The alphabet developed by the Phoenicians, ancestor of Greek and Latin letters, is famously inscribed on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram, found here and now in Beirut's national museum.
Read the complete Byblos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Byblos comes up about 106 km into the recorded legs. Next is Qalaat al-Chakif.
Perched on a cliff edge some three hundred metres above the gorge of the Litani river in southern Lebanon, Beaufort Castle, known in Arabic as Qalaat al-Chakif, has watched over the borderlands of the Levant for nearly a thousand years. The Crusaders took and fortified it in the twelfth century, and it was finally surrendered to Saladin in 1190 after a long siege. Later it was held by the Mamluks, rebuilt and repaired by local rulers, and in the twentieth century it became a fiercely contested military position, occupied by Palestinian fighters and then by the Israeli army from 1982 until its withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. Its stones have been battered by everything from siege engines to modern artillery.
Read the complete Qalaat al-Chakif write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 223 km into the recorded legs you reach Qalaat al-Chakif. Next is back through Byblos.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Byblos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Byblos, late in the day. Next is Baalbek.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Baalbek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Baalbek. That is the ride.
Baalbek → Byblos is 106 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Byblos → Qalaat al-Chakif is 117 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Qalaat al-Chakif → back through Byblos is 118 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Byblos → Baalbek is 105 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.