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.
A 388 km round trip from Luxembourg - roughly 6 h 41 in the saddle. On the way it passes La place forte de Longwy, Igel Column, Völklingen Ironworks and back through Igel Column. It crosses Luxembourg, France and Germany - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
38 km on Luxembourg Mullerthal Route.
Luxembourg City is built on a rocky plateau above the deep, green valleys of the Alzette and Pétrusse rivers, and for centuries it was one of the most powerful fortresses in Europe, nicknamed the Gibraltar of the North. Spanish, French, Austrian and Prussian armies all held it, and each added to its walls, bastions and tunnels. In 1867, after an international treaty, most of the fortifications were dismantled, but enough remains to make the old quarters and fortifications a UNESCO World Heritage site, inscribed in 1994.
Read the complete City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F is where the day begins. Next is La place forte de Longwy.
In 1678, after Louis XIV won Longwy from the Spanish Netherlands in the Treaty of Nijmegen, he sent his great military engineer Vauban to make sure nobody took it back. Vauban did not just fortify the old town; he built a new one, Longwy-Haut, on the plateau, designing a star-shaped stronghold with bastions, ditches and a geometric grid of streets around a central square with a well and church. It is one of the twelve sites grouped as the Fortifications of Vauban on the World Heritage list, and walking the ramparts you can still read the logic of seventeenth-century siege warfare in the earth and stone.
Read the complete La place forte de Longwy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La place forte de Longwy comes up about 38 km into the recorded legs. Next is Igel Column.
The Igel Column is one of those Roman monuments that seems to have survived by a happy accident. It stands in the village of Igel, on the Moselle a few kilometres upstream from Trier, a sandstone pillar some twenty-three metres high, covered with carved scenes. It was built in the third century as a funerary monument for the Secundinii, a family of wealthy cloth merchants, and the reliefs show them at work: bales of cloth being loaded and transported, customers being received, and a family meal, as well as mythological scenes on the upper sections. In the Middle Ages, people came to believe it showed the marriage of Constantine's mother, St Helena, which probably saved it from being broken up for building stone.
Read the complete Igel Column write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 119 km into the recorded legs you reach Igel Column. Next is Völklingen Ironworks.
Rust, soot and colossal machinery: the Völklingen Ironworks is a cathedral of heavy industry, and walking through it is an overwhelming experience. Founded in 1873 and developed by the Röchling family into one of the largest iron producers in Europe, the works produced pig iron from 1883 until 1986, when the blast furnaces were shut down. Instead of being demolished, the complex was preserved, and in 1994 it became the first industrial monument from the heyday of heavy industry to be listed by UNESCO. Today visitors can climb the blast furnaces, walk through the huge blowing engine hall, and explore the coking plant and the ore storage, much of which has been taken over by nature, with birch trees and wild plants growing among the steel.
Read the complete Völklingen Ironworks write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Völklingen Ironworks, about halfway. Next is back through Igel Column.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Igel Column write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Igel Column sits at 259 km, about halfway. Next is back through La place forte de Longwy.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La place forte de Longwy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through La place forte de Longwy comes up about 350 km into the recorded legs. Next is City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F closes the day.
City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F → La place forte de Longwy is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La place forte de Longwy → Igel Column is 81 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Igel Column → Völklingen Ironworks is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Völklingen Ironworks → back through Igel Column is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Igel Column → back through La place forte de Longwy is 81 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through La place forte de Longwy → City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.