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 440 km round trip from Woodstock - roughly 7 h 09 in the saddle. The stops in between: Avebury and Associated Monuments, Stonehenge, New Swanage to Studland Bay and back through Stonehenge. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
This part of the ride is 89 km of Blenheim Palace → Avebury and Associated Monuments.
Blenheim is what happens when a nation decides to say thank you with stone. After John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, beat the French and Bavarians at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, Queen Anne granted him the royal manor of Woodstock, and Parliament voted funds for a palace to go on it. Sir John Vanbrugh designed it, with Nicholas Hawksmoor at his side, and the result is so theatrical, so heavy with towers, trophies and courtyards, that it still divides opinion three centuries later. Funding rows, a famous falling out between Vanbrugh and the Duchess Sarah, and decades of building followed.
Read the complete Blenheim Palace write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Blenheim Palace is where the day begins. Next is Avebury and Associated Monuments.
Avebury is the place where a village grew up inside a stone circle. The henge, a huge circular bank and ditch enclosing the largest stone circle in Britain, was built around four and a half thousand years ago, and the village, with its church, its manor house and its pub, sits partly within it, with a road running right through the middle. You can walk among the stones, touch them, sit beside them, and watch the sheep grazing around them, which is a very different experience from the controlled visits at Stonehenge, its more famous partner on the World Heritage list.
Read the complete Avebury and Associated Monuments write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Avebury and Associated Monuments comes up about 89 km into the recorded legs. Next is Stonehenge.
Nobody quite knows why Stonehenge was built, and that is part of its power. Begun around 3000 BC as a circular ditch and bank, it was remodelled over the following thousand years, and the great sarsen stones, some weighing more than twenty tonnes, were raised around 2500 BC. The sarsens came from the Marlborough Downs, about twenty-five kilometres north; the smaller bluestones came from the Preseli Hills in west Wales, more than two hundred kilometres away, and how they were moved remains one of the great puzzles of prehistory. The monument is aligned with the sunrise at the summer solstice and the sunset at the winter solstice, and thousands gather here at those times. With Avebury and the surrounding landscape, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Read the complete Stonehenge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 129 km into the recorded legs you reach Stonehenge. Next is New Swanage to Studland Bay.
Between Swanage and Studland, the chalk of the Purbeck Hills meets the sea at the Foreland, and the white stacks of Old Harry Rocks stand off the headland like broken teeth. This is the eastern end of the Jurassic Coast, the World Heritage stretch of Dorset and East Devon that runs back through two hundred million years of geological history, and here the rocks are the youngest of the sequence, Cretaceous chalk. From Ballard Down above New Swanage, the views take in Swanage Bay, the Isle of Wight and the long sandy curve of Studland Bay.
Read the complete New Swanage to Studland Bay write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
New Swanage to Studland Bay, about halfway. Next is back through Stonehenge.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stonehenge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Stonehenge sits at 262 km, about halfway. Next is back through Avebury and Associated Monuments.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Avebury and Associated Monuments write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Avebury and Associated Monuments comes up about 360 km into the recorded legs. Next is Blenheim Palace.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Blenheim Palace write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Blenheim Palace closes the day.
Blenheim Palace → Avebury and Associated Monuments is 89 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Avebury and Associated Monuments → Stonehenge is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stonehenge → New Swanage to Studland Bay is 96 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
New Swanage to Studland Bay → back through Stonehenge is 96 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Stonehenge → back through Avebury and Associated Monuments is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Avebury and Associated Monuments → Blenheim Palace is 79 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.