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.
401 km from Maarssen to Maarssen, about 6 h 55 of riding. On the way it passes Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams, Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo, Van Nellefabriek and Béguinage de Hoogstraten. It crosses from Netherlands into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 47 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
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 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 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo.
Leiden gave the world a university, a painter and a puzzle about a Roman fort. The fort was called Matilo, and it stood on the south bank of the Oude Rijn, the old arm of the Rhine, in what is now the Roomburg district west of the old town, between about AD 40 and 270. It guarded the frontier that ran along the river from Germany to the sea, with a garrison of auxiliary troops and a civilian settlement beside it, and its name survives on the Roman road maps. Today the site is a green park, Park Matilo, where the outlines of the fort are marked out, and information panels tell the story. The Lower German Limes was inscribed by UNESCO in 2021.
Read the complete Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 82 km into the recorded legs you reach Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo. Next is Van Nellefabriek.
The Van Nelle factory, on the edge of Rotterdam, is one of the most beautiful industrial buildings ever made. Built between 1925 and 1931 for a company that processed coffee, tea and tobacco, it is a long, light building of glass and steel, with curtain walls that let daylight flood into the workspaces. The designers, Johannes Brinkman and Leendert van der Vlugt, created what became an icon of modernist architecture, a factory of light and air for its workers. It was added to the UNESCO list in 2014.
Read the complete Van Nellefabriek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Van Nellefabriek, about halfway. 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.
Béguinage de Hoogstraten sits at 201 km, about halfway. Next is back through Van Nellefabriek.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Van Nellefabriek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Van Nellefabriek comes up about 285 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 320 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo. 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, 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.
The route ends here after 401 km.
Dutch Water Defence Lines → Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo → Van Nellefabriek is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Van Nellefabriek → Béguinage de Hoogstraten is 84 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Béguinage de Hoogstraten → back through Van Nellefabriek is 84 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Van Nellefabriek → back through Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo → back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → Dutch Water Defence Lines is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.