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 450 km round trip from Voorschoten - roughly 6 h 30 in the saddle. The stops in between: Fort near Heemstede, Works along the IJ before Diemerdam, Dutch Water Defence Lines and Schokland and Surroundings. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
39 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it — speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through.
For about 35 km this is Dutch Flower Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Corbulo's canal is one of the oldest engineering works in the Netherlands, and it was dug by soldiers. In AD 47 the general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, commanding the Roman army in Lower Germany, put his men to work cutting a canal between the Rhine and the Meuse, partly to keep them busy and partly to give ships a sheltered route that avoided the open sea, with its storms and raiding Frisians. The Fossa Corbulonis, as it was called, ran through the low country between modern Leiden and the Meuse mouth, and its line is thought to be followed today by the Vliet, a quiet waterway that runs between Leiden and Delft.
Read the complete Corbulo's canal | Starrenburg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Corbulo's canal | Starrenburg is where the day begins. Next is Fort near Heemstede.
Between Haarlem and the bulb fields of the Dutch coast, near the town of Heemstede and the hamlet of De Glip, lies a squat, grassy fort surrounded by a moat. This is the Fort near Heemstede, built around the turn of the twentieth century as part of the Defence Line of Amsterdam, a ring of forts, dykes and flooding zones around the city, and now part of the UNESCO-listed Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Read the complete Fort near Heemstede write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort near Heemstede comes up about 43 km into the recorded legs. Next is Works along the IJ before Diemerdam.
Just east of Amsterdam, where the city's suburbs give way to water and polders, a narrow strip of land runs out along the old shore of the IJ and the IJmeer toward Muiden. The Diemerdam is an old dike, and the works along the IJ before it are part of the Dutch Water Defence Lines, the system of forts, dikes, sluices and inundation fields that the Dutch built over centuries to defend their cities by flooding the land around them. The Defence Line of Amsterdam, a ring of forts around the capital, was listed by UNESCO in 1996 and later joined with the New Dutch Waterline into a single site.
Read the complete Works along the IJ before Diemerdam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 78 km into the recorded legs you reach Works along the IJ before Diemerdam. Next is Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Forget mountains and passes: the Dutch defended Amsterdam with water. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, the army built a ring of forts around the capital at a distance of roughly fifteen to twenty kilometres, the Stelling van Amsterdam, designed to flood the surrounding polders to a depth too shallow for boats but too deep to wade through. Forty-odd forts, along with dykes, sluices and batteries, formed the ring, and the area north of the city near De Rijp and the Beemster was part of it. The Defence Line of Amsterdam gained World Heritage status in 1996, and in 2021 it was extended to include the older New Dutch Waterline further south, the whole now known as the Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Read the complete Dutch Water Defence Lines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dutch Water Defence Lines, about halfway. Next is Schokland and Surroundings.
Schokland was once an island in the Zuiderzee, a long, narrow strip of peat and clay surrounded by an inland sea that constantly threatened to swallow it. For centuries, its inhabitants lived on raised mounds and fought a losing battle against the water, as storms ate away at the island's edges. By the mid-nineteenth century, life had become so precarious that in 1859 the Dutch government ordered the island to be evacuated. Then, in the twentieth century, the Dutch did something extraordinary: they enclosed the Zuiderzee with a dam, the Afsluitdijk, completed in 1932, and drained large parts of it to create new land. The Noordoostpolder, drained in 1942, swallowed Schokland, and the former island now rises slightly above the surrounding fields, a long green ridge in a flat landscape of farmland. In 1995, Schokland became the first Dutch site to be listed by UNESCO, as a symbol of the Netherlands' heroic struggle against the water.
Read the complete Schokland and Surroundings write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Schokland and Surroundings sits at 202 km, about halfway. Next is back through Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Dutch Water Defence Lines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Dutch Water Defence Lines comes up about 333 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Works along the IJ before Diemerdam.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Works along the IJ before Diemerdam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 371 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Works along the IJ before Diemerdam. Next is back through Fort near Heemstede.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort near Heemstede write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fort near Heemstede, late in the day. Next is Corbulo's canal | Starrenburg.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Corbulo's canal | Starrenburg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 450 km.
Corbulo's canal | Starrenburg → Fort near Heemstede is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort near Heemstede → Works along the IJ before Diemerdam is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Works along the IJ before Diemerdam → Dutch Water Defence Lines is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dutch Water Defence Lines → Schokland and Surroundings is 110 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Schokland and Surroundings → back through Dutch Water Defence Lines is 108 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Dutch Water Defence Lines → back through Works along the IJ before Diemerdam is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Works along the IJ before Diemerdam → back through Fort near Heemstede is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort near Heemstede → Corbulo's canal | Starrenburg is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.