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.
189 km from Lunetten to Lunetten, about 3 h 03 of riding. It goes by way of Woerden-Centrum, Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan, Van Nellefabriek and back through Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 35 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Two layers of Dutch defence history sit on top of each other just south-east of Utrecht. Around two thousand years ago, the Romans built a fort here called Fectio, at the point where a branch of the Rhine met the Vecht, with a harbour for the fleet that patrolled the river frontier. Its remains lie buried in the fields near Vechten and are part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire, Lower German Limes, a World Heritage site since 2021. Close by stands Fort bij Vechten, a nineteenth-century fortress of the New Dutch Waterline, a defensive system that could flood large areas of land to stop an invading army. That system is itself part of the UNESCO site of the Dutch Water Defence Lines. The fort now houses a museum explaining how the waterline worked, and how a country below sea level turned water into a weapon.
Read the complete Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk is where the day begins. Next is Woerden-Centrum.
Woerden is a small Dutch town on the Oude Rijn, the old Rhine, halfway between Utrecht and Leiden, in the middle of the Green Heart of Holland, a landscape of polders, meadows, ditches and cows. Its centre is a compact old town ringed by canals, with a castle, a big church and a windmill on the old ramparts. The Romans were here too: Woerden lies on the line of the Lower German Limes, and the remains of a Roman fort lie beneath the town centre.
Read the complete Woerden-Centrum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Woerden-Centrum comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan.
The Rhine ends in a whimper rather than a bang. After its long journey from the Alps, its old main branch, the Oude Rijn, winds quietly through the flat polders of South Holland past Leiden toward the North Sea, and for the Romans this sluggish waterway was the northern frontier of the empire. At Roomburg, on the edge of Leiden and Leiderdorp, stood the fort of Matilo, guarding the river and the canal that linked it with the Meuse, and today its site is part of the Roomburgerpark, a green space with information points and outlines marking where the fort stood. It belongs to the Lower Germanic Limes, listed by UNESCO in 2021.
Read the complete Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 60 km into the recorded legs you reach Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan. Next is Van Nellefabriek.
The Van Nelle factory, on the edge of Rotterdam, is one of the most beautiful industrial buildings ever made. Built between 1925 and 1931 for a company that processed coffee, tea and tobacco, it is a long, light building of glass and steel, with curtain walls that let daylight flood into the workspaces. The designers, Johannes Brinkman and Leendert van der Vlugt, created what became an icon of modernist architecture, a factory of light and air for its workers. It was added to the UNESCO list in 2014.
Read the complete Van Nellefabriek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Van Nellefabriek, about halfway. Next is back through Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan sits at 128 km, about halfway. Next is back through Woerden-Centrum.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Woerden-Centrum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Woerden-Centrum comes up about 163 km into the recorded legs. Next is Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk closes the day.
Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk → Woerden-Centrum is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Woerden-Centrum → Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan → Van Nellefabriek is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Van Nellefabriek → back through Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Leiden-Roomburg | Besjeslaan → back through Woerden-Centrum is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Woerden-Centrum → Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.