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 Darmstadt it runs 389 km to Darmstadt; allow about 6 h 42 of riding. On the way it passes Ruine Altenmuster, Speyer Cathedral, Aalkisten Pond and Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung. 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, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse invited a group of young artists and architects to Darmstadt and gave them a hill to build on. The Mathildenhöhe became an artists' colony and a showcase for Jugendstil, the German Art Nouveau, with studios, houses and exhibitions designed as total works of art, down to the cutlery. Behind it lay a simple idea: that art should shape everyday life, from the house to the chair to the wallpaper. The exhibitions of 1901, 1904, 1908 and 1914 drew visitors from all over Europe, and the ensemble was inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2021.
Read the complete Exhibition grounds 1904 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Exhibition grounds 1904 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 34 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 87 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 Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung.
In 1927, on a hillside overlooking Stuttgart, a group of the most radical architects in Europe built an entire housing estate in a few months as an exhibition of what modern living could look like. The Weissenhof Estate, organised by the Deutscher Werkbund under the direction of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, brought together Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Hans Scharoun, J.J.P. Oud and others, and their flat-roofed, white-walled houses became a manifesto for the International Style.
Read the complete Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung sits at 195 km, about halfway. Next is back through Aalkisten Pond.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Aalkisten Pond write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Aalkisten Pond comes up about 245 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 303 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Speyer Cathedral. 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, late in the day. Next is Exhibition grounds 1904.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Exhibition grounds 1904 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 389 km.
Exhibition grounds 1904 → Ruine Altenmuster is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ruine Altenmuster → Speyer Cathedral is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Speyer Cathedral → Aalkisten Pond is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Aalkisten Pond → Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung → back through Aalkisten Pond is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Aalkisten Pond → back through Speyer Cathedral is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Speyer Cathedral → back through Ruine Altenmuster is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ruine Altenmuster → Exhibition grounds 1904 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.