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.
176 km from Middenbeemster to Middenbeemster, about 3 h 41 of riding. On the way it passes Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams, Fort along the Pampus, Fort near Heemstede and back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 24 km this is Dutch Flower Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
In 1612 a lake north of Amsterdam disappeared. Wealthy merchants, flush with money from the Dutch trading boom, financed the draining of the Beemster, and the engineer Jan Adriaenszoon Leeghwater used dozens of windmills to pump the water out into a ring canal. What remained was a polder several metres below sea level, laid out in a perfectly regular grid of roads, canals and fields based on Renaissance ideas of order and proportion. The Beemster was inscribed by UNESCO in 1999 as a masterpiece of creative planning, and from above it looks like a ruled sheet of paper.
Read the complete Droogmakerij de Beemster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Droogmakerij de Beemster is where the day begins. Next is Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams.
Nobody rides a motorbike into the Amsterdam canal ring for the curves. You come because in the early seventeenth century, the city at the height of its Golden Age planned an extension of startling ambition: three main canals, the Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, laid out in concentric arcs around the medieval core, lined with tall, narrow merchants' houses with gabled roofs and hoisting beams. Work began in 1613, and the result, a UNESCO site since 2010, is still one of the most admired examples of urban planning in the world.
Read the complete Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams comes up about 28 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fort along the Pampus.
Out in the open water of the IJmeer, a few kilometres off the old fortified town of Muiden, a low circular fortress sits on an artificial island. This is Pampus, one of more than forty forts that make up the Defence Line of Amsterdam, a ring of fortifications built around the city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The idea was simple and very Dutch: in case of attack, large areas of land around the city would be flooded to a depth that was too shallow for boats and too deep for soldiers to wade, and the forts would guard the roads, railways and dykes that crossed the flooded zone. Pampus guarded the approach to Amsterdam by water. The line was listed by UNESCO in 1996.
Read the complete Fort along the Pampus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 45 km into the recorded legs you reach Fort along the Pampus.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams, about halfway. 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 sits at 85 km, about halfway. Next is back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams comes up about 110 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Fort along the Pampus.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort along the Pampus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 127 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Fort along the Pampus.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams, late in the day. Next is Droogmakerij de Beemster.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Droogmakerij de Beemster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 176 km.
Droogmakerij de Beemster → Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → Fort along the Pampus is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort along the Pampus → Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → Fort near Heemstede is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort near Heemstede → back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → back through Fort along the Pampus is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort along the Pampus → back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → Droogmakerij de Beemster is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.