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 342 km round trip from Voorschoten - roughly 5 h 44 in the saddle. The stops in between: Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout, Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg, Works along the IJ before Diemerdam and Dutch Water Defence Lines. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 47 km this is Zeeland Delta Works Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
A straight line on a Dutch map is nearly always a canal, and this one is two thousand years old. The Fossa Corbulonis, or Corbulo's canal, was dug in AD 47 by Roman soldiers under the general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, to link the Rhine with the Meuse and give supply ships a safe route that avoided the open sea. It ran through the dunes and marsh of what is now South Holland, and today the line of the Vliet, the canal between Leiden and Delft, follows part of it. Corbulo, so the story goes, dug it to keep his idle legions busy, and the emperor Claudius called his troops back from beyond the Rhine soon afterwards. Vlietvoorde, near Voorschoten, is one of the places where the route can be traced, and the site is part of the Lower German Limes, which won World Heritage status in 2021.
Read the complete Corbulo's canal | Vlietvoorde write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Corbulo's canal | Vlietvoorde is where the day begins. Next is Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout.
Nineteen windmills stand in two rows along the canals at Kinderdijk, their sails turning slowly against the wide Dutch sky, and it is one of the most iconic sights in the Netherlands. They were built in the eighteenth century to pump water out of the Alblasserwaard, a low-lying polder between the rivers Lek and Noord, which would otherwise be flooded. Each mill lifted water from a lower canal to a higher one, and from there it was let out into the river. Over time steam, diesel and electric pumping stations took over the job, and the most recent ones still keep the polder dry today. The mill network was listed by UNESCO in 1997.
Read the complete Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout comes up about 47 km into the recorded legs. Next is Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg.
Two thousand years ago the Rhine marked the northern edge of the Roman Empire here, and along its southern bank the army built a chain of forts, watchtowers and a road to link them. In the western suburbs of Utrecht, in the new district of Leidsche Rijn and the old village of De Meern, that road has been found again under the fields, a gravel and clay embankment with ditches either side, and part of it can be traced along the street called Zandweg. Nearby, at Castellum Hoge Woerd, the outline of a Roman fort has been rebuilt in a modern form, with a museum, a theatre and an observatory, and a flat-bottomed Roman river barge, found here in 1997 almost intact and complete with the cargo and personal belongings of its skipper, is on display. The Lower German Limes became a World Heritage site in 2021.
Read the complete Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 98 km into the recorded legs you reach Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg. 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.
Works along the IJ before Diemerdam, about halfway. 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 sits at 160 km, about halfway. 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.
back through Works along the IJ before Diemerdam comes up about 208 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 243 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg. Next is back through Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout, late in the day. Next is Corbulo's canal | Vlietvoorde.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Corbulo's canal | Vlietvoorde write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 342 km.
Corbulo's canal | Vlietvoorde → Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout → Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg → 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 → 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 Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg → back through Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout → Corbulo's canal | Vlietvoorde is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.