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 Mainhardt it runs 101 km to Mainhardt; allow about 1 h 53 of riding. It goes by way of Watchtowers WP 9/100, Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch and back through Watchtowers WP 9/100. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Mainhardt sits on a plateau in the Swabian-Franconian Forest, a wooded upland east of Heilbronn, and in the second century, a Roman army unit was stationed here. The fort was built around the middle of the second century, as part of the forward movement of the frontier, to guard the Limes that ran just to the east. It held a unit of around five hundred soldiers, and a civil settlement grew up beside it, with houses, workshops, baths and inns, where families, craftsmen and traders lived.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Mainhard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort site and civil settlement of Mainhard is where the day begins. Next is Watchtowers WP 9/100.
The Limes in the Swabian-Franconian Forest has a quality that surprises people who expect Roman walls to follow hills: it runs in a dead-straight line, for kilometres at a stretch, regardless of what stands in the way. Near Murrhardt the line dives through woodland and valleys, and the signposted watchtower sites mark points where a timber and later stone tower stood on the frontier, with a ditch and a palisade or bank beside it. The numbering, with its slash, comes from the nineteenth-century surveyors who first mapped the frontier, and archaeologists still use it.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/100 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 9/100 comes up about 20 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch.
Lorch, in the Rems valley east of Stuttgart, sits on a historic seam. Just outside town, the Upper German Limes, which ran as a palisade and ditch from the Rhine, met the Raetian Limes, the stone wall running east to the Danube, and the Romans built a fort here to watch over that junction and the valley road. The fort lay beneath what is now the old town centre, and its outline, together with traces of the civilian settlement that grew around it, is marked in places in the streets. It is part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage site, and a reconstructed watchtower stands on a hill nearby.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 50 km into the recorded legs you reach Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch. Next is back through Watchtowers WP 9/100.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/100 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Watchtowers WP 9/100, late in the day. Next is Fort site and civil settlement of Mainhard.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Mainhard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Fort site and civil settlement of Mainhard. That is the ride.
Fort site and civil settlement of Mainhard → Watchtowers WP 9/100 is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtowers WP 9/100 → Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch → back through Watchtowers WP 9/100 is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Watchtowers WP 9/100 → Fort site and civil settlement of Mainhard is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.