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 536 km round trip from Ksamil - roughly 11 h 00 in the saddle. The stops in between: Zagori Cultural Landscape, Meteora and back through Zagori Cultural Landscape. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Albania into Greece - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 164 km this is Greece Meteora and Pindus Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
At the southern tip of Albania, on a wooded headland between a lagoon and the narrow Vivari channel, the ruins of Butrint have been layering up for close to three thousand years. Greek colonists from Corfu, just across the strait, built a sanctuary and a theatre here; the Romans made it a colony and added baths, an aqueduct and villas; the Byzantines raised a great baptistery with a mosaic floor of birds and animals; and the Venetians left a fortified tower and a triangular castle by the water. Wandering the shaded paths among laurel and eucalyptus, you move from one century to the next in a few steps, with frogs croaking in the flooded parts of the agora and the lagoon glinting through the trees. The site has been on the UNESCO list since 1992 and is the heart of a national park.
Read the complete Butrint write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Butrint is where the day begins. Next is Zagori Cultural Landscape.
In the mountains north of Ioannina, forty-odd stone villages cling to the slopes of the Pindus, linked by cobbled mule paths and arched bridges that seem to grow out of the rock. This is Zagori, a region of grey slate roofs, plane trees, rushing streams and one of the deepest gorges in the world, Vikos. In 2023 it was added to the World Heritage list as a cultural landscape, recognising how people and mountains shaped each other here over centuries.
Read the complete Zagori Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zagori Cultural Landscape comes up about 121 km into the recorded legs. Next is Meteora.
Meteora is the kind of place you assume is a trick of photography until you round the bend. Enormous grey pillars of rock rise out of the Thessaly plain, some more than 300 metres high, and on top of several of them sit monasteries, walls and windows flush with the cliff edge. The name means suspended in the air, and the sandstone and conglomerate towers were shaped over millions of years by water, wind and earthquakes, long before anyone thought to build on them.
Read the complete Meteora write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 285 km into the recorded legs you reach Meteora. Next is back through Zagori Cultural Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zagori Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Zagori Cultural Landscape, late in the day. Next is Butrint.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Butrint write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Butrint. That is the ride.
Butrint → Zagori Cultural Landscape is 121 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Zagori Cultural Landscape → Meteora is 164 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Meteora → back through Zagori Cultural Landscape is 130 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Zagori Cultural Landscape → Butrint is 121 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.