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 349 km round trip from Al Ḩawāsh - roughly 5 h 25 in the saddle. On the way it passes Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli, Baalbek and back through Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,750 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Syria into Lebanon - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
T. E. Lawrence called Krak des Chevaliers the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world, and for once the praise is hardly exaggerated. It stands on a spur of the Jebel Ansariyeh in western Syria, controlling the Homs Gap, the low pass between the mountains and the sea through which armies and caravans have always passed. The Knights Hospitaller took it over in 1142, enlarged it into a concentric fortress of two rings of walls, and held it for over a century against repeated attacks. It could house a garrison of two thousand, with stables, storerooms, a great hall and a chapel, and the huge sloping glacis at the south side made the walls almost impossible to undermine.
Read the complete Crac des Chevaliers write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Crac des Chevaliers is where the day begins. 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.
Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli comes up about 68 km into the recorded legs. Next is Baalbek.
The stones of Baalbek are so big that for centuries people said giants or djinn must have moved them. In the trilithon, part of the foundation of the temple of Jupiter, three limestone blocks each weigh around eight hundred tonnes, and in the quarry nearby lie even larger blocks, including the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, which were cut but never moved. The Romans called the city Heliopolis, the city of the sun, and built here one of the largest temple complexes of their empire over a period of two centuries. Six columns of the temple of Jupiter still stand, about twenty metres tall, and the temple of Bacchus next to it is one of the best-preserved Roman temples anywhere, with richly carved ceilings and doorways.
Read the complete Baalbek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 170 km into the recorded legs you reach Baalbek. 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, late in the day. Next is Crac des Chevaliers.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Crac des Chevaliers write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Crac des Chevaliers. That is the ride.
Crac des Chevaliers → Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli is 68 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli → Baalbek is 102 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Baalbek → back through Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli is 111 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli → Crac des Chevaliers is 68 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.