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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Al Muharraq it runs 990 km to Al Muharraq; allow about 17 h 04 of riding. The stops in between: Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field, Al Zubarah Archaeological Site and back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field. It crosses from Bahrain into Qatar - carry ID and check the toll rules. The coast is the point of it.
Bahrain was once a pearl island, and its fortune depended on a harvest that took place under water. For centuries before oil, the men of Muharraq sailed out into the Gulf in the summer months to dive for oysters, going down on a single breath with a nose clip and a stone to carry them to the bottom, and bringing up baskets of shells in the hope of finding a pearl. The Bahraini pearls were famous, and their trade supported merchants, boat owners and whole districts. In the 1930s the Japanese invented cultured pearls, and the market collapsed, which is partly why Bahrain was so ready for oil.
Read the complete Bū Māhir Seashore write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bū Māhir Seashore is where the day begins. Next is Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field.
Bahrain was once covered with burial mounds. Over thousands of years, between roughly 2200 BC and the early centuries AD, the people of Dilmun, an ancient civilisation that controlled trade in the Gulf between Mesopotamia and the Indus valley, built tens of thousands of tombs across the northern part of the island. Many have been lost to modern development, but some fields survive, and in 2019 a selection of them, including the Madinat Hamad mound fields, was inscribed as the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Dilmun Burial Mounds.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field comes up about 142 km into the recorded legs. Next is Al Zubarah Archaeological Site.
Out on the north-west coast of Qatar, where the desert slides into a shallow turquoise sea, stand the low ruins of Al Zubarah, once one of the busiest pearling and trading towns in the Gulf. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the town thrived on pearls dived from the oyster beds offshore, traded on to India, Persia and beyond. Then it declined, was abandoned in the early twentieth century, and the sand covered it. Archaeologists have since uncovered streets, houses, a souk, mosques and a long town wall running in an arc around the old harbour. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2013.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 495 km into the recorded legs you reach Al Zubarah Archaeological Site. Next is back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field, late in the day. Next is Bū Māhir Seashore.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bū Māhir Seashore write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Bū Māhir Seashore. That is the ride.
Bū Māhir Seashore → Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field is 142 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field → Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 353 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field is 353 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field → Bū Māhir Seashore is 142 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.