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 Lavelanet it runs 766 km to Lavelanet; allow about 13 h 12 of riding. The stops in between: Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley, Roc del Rumbau o Roca dels moros and back through Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses France, Andorra and Spain - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
The castle of Montségur sits on a steep limestone peak, the pog, at about twelve hundred metres above the valleys of the Ariège, and even from the road below it looks impossible. In the thirteenth century it was the last great refuge of the Cathars, the dualist Christians condemned as heretics by the Church and crushed by the Albigensian Crusade. In 1243 a royal army laid siege to the summit, and after ten months the defenders surrendered in March 1244. Those who refused to renounce their faith, more than two hundred people, were burned at the foot of the mountain, in a place still called the Field of the Burned. A simple stone memorial stands there today.
Read the complete Château de Montségur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Château de Montségur is where the day begins. Next is Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley.
Andorra is famous for shopping and ski lifts, which makes the Madriu-Perafita-Claror valley a surprise. A glacial valley that runs up into the mountains from the edge of the capital's built-up area, it is a landscape of granite peaks, lakes, pastures and stone shepherd huts, almost untouched by roads. UNESCO listed it in 2004 as a cultural landscape because it shows, in one place, how people have lived in the high Pyrenees for thousands of years, with pastoral farming, iron forges and mountain paths shaping the land together.
Read the complete Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley comes up about 179 km into the recorded legs. Next is Roc del Rumbau o Roca dels moros.
Where the Segre comes down from the Pyrenees towards the plains of Lleida, it squeezes through a gap at Oliana, held back by a dam and a reservoir that fills the valley above. On the slopes nearby, Roc del Rumbau, also called the Roca dels Moros, the Moors' rock, is a shelter with prehistoric paintings, one of the Catalan sites of the World Heritage Site of Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin. The name is a common one in Catalonia and Spain: local people often attributed anything ancient and mysterious to the Moors.
Read the complete Roc del Rumbau o Roca dels moros write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 384 km into the recorded legs you reach Roc del Rumbau o Roca dels moros. Next is back through Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley, late in the day. Next is Château de Montségur.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Château de Montségur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Château de Montségur. That is the ride.
Château de Montségur → Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley is 179 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley → Roc del Rumbau o Roca dels moros is 205 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Roc del Rumbau o Roca dels moros → back through Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley is 205 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley → Château de Montségur is 179 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.