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.
186 km from Uitgeest to Uitgeest, about 3 h 23 of riding. On the way it passes Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams, Droogmakerij de Beemster, back through Droogmakerij de Beemster and back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams.
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 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 31 km into the recorded legs. Next is Droogmakerij de Beemster.
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.
about 62 km into the recorded legs you reach Droogmakerij de Beemster.
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 back through 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.
back through Droogmakerij de Beemster sits at 113 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 157 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Dutch Water Defence Lines closes the day.
Dutch Water Defence Lines → Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → Droogmakerij de Beemster is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Droogmakerij de Beemster → Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → back through Droogmakerij de Beemster is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Droogmakerij de Beemster → back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 32 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 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.