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.
From Darmstadt it runs 298 km to Darmstadt; allow about 4 h 15 of riding. The stops in between: Ruine Altenmuster, Speyer Cathedral, Aalkisten Pond and back through Speyer Cathedral. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 53 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
In 1899 the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse did something unusual for a ruler: he invited a group of young artists to Darmstadt and gave them a hill to build on. The Mathildenhohe, a low rise on the edge of the old town, became an artists' colony where architects, painters and designers could live, work and experiment. The first great exhibition, in 1901, was called A Document of German Art, and the houses and studios built for it were part of the show. UNESCO listed the colony as a World Heritage site in 2021.
Read the complete Exhibition grounds 1901 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Exhibition grounds 1901 is where the day begins. Next is Ruine Altenmuster.
Lorsch Abbey, founded in the eighth century, became one of the most powerful monasteries of the Carolingian empire, with vast estates, a famous library and the patronage of Charlemagne himself. Its first home, however, was not on the site of the later abbey, but a short distance away, on an island in the Weschnitz river, a place known as Altenmünster, the old minster. The ruins of that first foundation, a few low walls in a meadow, are a quiet counterpoint to the abbey's most famous building, the Torhalle, a gatehouse with a façade of red and white stone panels, one of the few surviving examples of Carolingian architecture. The abbey and Altenmünster together have been on the UNESCO list since 1991.
Read the complete Ruine Altenmuster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ruine Altenmuster comes up about 32 km into the recorded legs. Next is Speyer Cathedral.
Some buildings impress you with height, others with mass. Speyer Cathedral does it with both, rising from the left bank of the Rhine with six towers and a long, rhythmic nave of red sandstone. It was begun around 1030 by the emperor Conrad II, the first of the Salian dynasty, and is generally considered the largest surviving Romanesque church in the world. Its crypt, a forest of sturdy columns and striped arches, holds the tombs of several emperors and kings, which tells you how central this town once was to the Holy Roman Empire.
Read the complete Speyer Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 83 km into the recorded legs you reach Speyer Cathedral. Next is Aalkisten Pond.
The name sounds like a joke, Eel Boxes, but it is a literal description. The Aalkistensee is another of the ponds that the Cistercian monks of Maulbronn built to hold fish, and a kiste was a wooden box or a pen in which eels were kept alive. The monks needed fish for the many days of the year when meat was forbidden, and a monastery that held land and water could supply its own table and sell the surplus. The Maulbronn system, with its dams, channels and sluices, was a clever piece of hydraulic engineering for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and it works on the principle of gravity and careful levels.
Read the complete Aalkisten Pond write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Aalkisten Pond, about halfway. Next is back through Speyer Cathedral.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Speyer Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Speyer Cathedral sits at 193 km, about halfway. Next is back through Ruine Altenmuster.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ruine Altenmuster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ruine Altenmuster comes up about 266 km into the recorded legs. Next is Exhibition grounds 1901.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Exhibition grounds 1901 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Exhibition grounds 1901 closes the day.
Exhibition grounds 1901 → Ruine Altenmuster is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ruine Altenmuster → Speyer Cathedral is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Speyer Cathedral → Aalkisten Pond is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Aalkisten Pond → back through Speyer Cathedral is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Speyer Cathedral → back through Ruine Altenmuster is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ruine Altenmuster → Exhibition grounds 1901 is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.