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.
336 km from Jbaïl to Jbaïl, about 5 h 24 of riding. On the way it passes Ouadi Qadisha, Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli, Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di and back through Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,550 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Lebanon into Syria - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Ouadi Qadisha.
Cliffs fall hundreds of metres into the Qadisha valley in northern Lebanon, and halfway down, tucked into caves and ledges, are monasteries and hermitages where Maronite Christians have prayed and hidden for over a thousand years. The name means holy, and the valley was a refuge for monks and believers fleeing persecution. The monastery of Qannoubine, seat of the Maronite patriarchs for centuries, clings to the rock, and the monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya kept one of the first printing presses in the Middle East, used to print psalms in Syriac. UNESCO lists the valley together with the forest of the Cedars of God above it.
Read the complete Ouadi Qadisha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ouadi Qadisha comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli.
In the early 1960s, the Lebanese government invited the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer to design an international fairground for Tripoli, the country's second city. He produced a vast, futuristic complex of sweeping concrete forms: a huge boomerang-shaped exhibition hall, a dome for experimental theatre, an open-air theatre, a helipad, a water tower and more, all set in a park on the edge of the city. Construction was almost finished when the civil war broke out in 1975, and the fair was never completed. Today the site stands as an extraordinary, melancholy monument to modernist ambition and lost hope, and it was listed by UNESCO in 2023, immediately placed on the list of heritage in danger.
Read the complete Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 101 km into the recorded legs you reach Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli. Next is Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di.
Crac des Chevaliers stands on a spur of the Jebel Ansariyya, overlooking the Homs Gap, the one low corridor between the Mediterranean coast and the Syrian interior, and that is why it was built here. In 1142 the Count of Tripoli gave the site to the Knights Hospitaller, who rebuilt it over the following century into the greatest castle of the Crusades, with two concentric rings of walls, a moat, a long, sloping ramp, and a great hall with Gothic vaults. At its peak it could hold a garrison of some two thousand men, with stables, storerooms and an enormous cistern.
Read the complete Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di, about halfway. Next is back through Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli sits at 200 km, about halfway. Next is back through Ouadi Qadisha.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ouadi Qadisha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ouadi Qadisha comes up about 274 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
Byblos closes the day.
Byblos → Ouadi Qadisha is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ouadi Qadisha → Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli → Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di is 68 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di → back through Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli → back through Ouadi Qadisha is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ouadi Qadisha → Byblos is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.