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.
A 277 km round trip from Wassertrüdingen - roughly 4 h 42 in the saddle. On the way it passes Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68, Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 and back through Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 73 km this is Romantic Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
In the fields near Wassertrüdingen, in the soft valley of the Wörnitz and the hills of Middle Franconia, lie the buried remains of a Roman fort that once held an auxiliary unit of several hundred soldiers. Unterschwaningen was one of the larger posts on the Raetian section of the frontier, built in the second century to guard the line and the road behind it. Around it, as at every fort, a civilian settlement grew up, with houses, workshops, bathhouses and a cemetery, and the place must have been noisy and smoky, the roar of a small frontier town. Today the area is mostly farmland, and the outlines are visible only from the air, in dry summers, when crop marks trace the walls.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Untersch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort site and civil settlement of Untersch is where the day begins. Next is Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68.
The Roman frontier wall known as the Limes ran for more than five hundred kilometres across what is now southern Germany, from the Rhine to the Danube, and near Aalen it passed through the Kocher valley and over the hills of the Ostalb. Along its length, watchtowers were built at regular intervals, numbered by archaeologists in sequence: WP 12/60 to 12/68 are a group of tower sites near Hüttlingen, mostly now visible as low mounds or reconstructed foundations. The Upper Germanic-Raetian Limes was inscribed by UNESCO in 2005 as part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68 comes up about 73 km into the recorded legs. Next is Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68.
Between Öhringen and Mainhardt, the Upper German Limes does something a Roman engineer must have been proud of: it runs dead straight for many kilometres, up hill and down dale, ignoring the terrain as if drawn with a ruler on a map. The watchtower sites numbered along this section lie on that line, in the Hohenlohe country of northern Württemberg, between the open farmland around Pfedelbach and the dark wooded hills of the Swabian-Franconian Forest.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 139 km into the recorded legs you reach Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68. Next is back through Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68, late in the day. Next is Fort site and civil settlement of Untersch.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Untersch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Fort site and civil settlement of Untersch. That is the ride.
Fort site and civil settlement of Untersch → Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68 is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68 → Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 → back through Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68 is 65 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Watchtowers WP 12/60 to 12/68 → Fort site and civil settlement of Untersch is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.