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.
From Maarssen it runs 342 km to Maarssen; allow about 5 h 54 of riding. The stops in between: Corbulo's canal | Knippolder, Béguinage de Hoogstraten and back through Corbulo's canal | Knippolder. It crosses from Netherlands into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
The Dutch had a clever idea for defending their heartland: instead of building walls, they would drown the approaches. The Dutch Water Defence Lines, a World Heritage site, consist of a long belt of land around Amsterdam and Utrecht that could be flooded deliberately in wartime, with water deep enough to stop soldiers on foot and wagons, but too shallow for boats. Forts, dikes, sluices and pumping stations controlled the water. The New Dutch Waterline, built in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ran south-east of Amsterdam through the area around Maarssen and the Loosdrecht lakes, and it was mobilised during the First and Second World Wars, though aircraft and modern artillery had made it largely obsolete by then.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Corbulo's canal | Knippolder.
In AD 47, a Roman general on a quiet frontier had a problem, which was how to keep his legions from getting restless. Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, newly appointed to command in Lower Germany, solved it, according to the historian Tacitus, by making his troops dig. The result was a canal, the Fossa Corbulonis, linking the mouth of the Rhine with the Maas, so that ships could pass between the two rivers on a sheltered inland route rather than risk the open North Sea. It is one of the earliest known large engineering works of its kind in the Netherlands.
Read the complete Corbulo's canal | Knippolder write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Corbulo's canal | Knippolder comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Béguinage de Hoogstraten.
A béguinage is one of the most peaceful places in the Low Countries: a walled enclosure of small houses around a green courtyard and a church, built in the Middle Ages for béguines, women who lived a religious life of prayer and work without taking permanent vows. They could own property, leave if they wished and support themselves by weaving, teaching or nursing, which made the béguinages a unique form of female independence in medieval Europe. The béguinage at Hoogstraten, in the north of Antwerp province near the Dutch border, is one of thirteen Flemish béguinages on the World Heritage list, and it is a quiet, charming place, with whitewashed houses, a baroque church and a garden where time seems to slow.
Read the complete Béguinage de Hoogstraten write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 171 km into the recorded legs you reach Béguinage de Hoogstraten. Next is back through Corbulo's canal | Knippolder.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Corbulo's canal | Knippolder write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Corbulo's canal | Knippolder, late in the day. Next is 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 at Dutch Water Defence Lines. That is the ride.
Dutch Water Defence Lines → Corbulo's canal | Knippolder is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Corbulo's canal | Knippolder → Béguinage de Hoogstraten is 110 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Béguinage de Hoogstraten → back through Corbulo's canal | Knippolder is 110 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Corbulo's canal | Knippolder → Dutch Water Defence Lines is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.