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 294 km round trip from Kotor - roughly 7 h 26 in the saddle. On the way it passes St. Barbara, Lokrum Island, Vjetrenica Cave and back through Lokrum Island. It crosses Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 50 km this is Adriatic Highway, Jadranska Magistrala, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Kotor is a walled medieval town squeezed between a vertical limestone mountain and a deep green bay, and the whole arrangement looks almost too neat to be real. The bay is not a fjord, as people like to say, but a drowned river canyon, a ria, whose channels twist inland in several arms so that the mountains seem to close behind you as you ride around it. Black Mountain, Montenegro itself, takes its name from the dark forest on Mount Lovcen, which rises straight above the town to nearly fifteen hundred metres.
Read the complete Fortified city of Kotor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fortified city of Kotor is where the day begins. Next is St. Barbara, 38 km on.
Konavle is the long, fertile valley that runs south east of Dubrovnik towards the Montenegrin border, and St. Barbara is a small church at Dubravka, near its upper edge, surrounded by a field of medieval tombstones. These stećci, heavy carved blocks of limestone dating from the late Middle Ages, are part of the cross-border UNESCO listing of stećci cemeteries shared by Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia. The Dubravka group is one of the most accessible in Croatia, and the setting, with the church, the old stones and the view over the valley, is quietly beautiful.
Read the complete St. Barbara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
St. Barbara comes up about 50 km into the recorded legs. Next is Lokrum Island.
From the walls of Dubrovnik you look straight across a short stretch of sea to a low, dark green island covered in pines and holm oaks. That is Lokrum, and it is the closest thing the city has to a back garden. No cars or motorbikes are allowed on it, and nobody may stay overnight. You leave the bike on the mainland, catch one of the regular boats from the old harbour, and in about a quarter of an hour you step onto a quay with peacocks strutting about as if they owned the place, which they more or less do.
Read the complete Lokrum Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 98 km into the recorded legs you reach Lokrum Island. Next is Vjetrenica Cave.
The karst country inland from Dubrovnik is a landscape of grey limestone hills, stony fields and long, flat-bottomed valleys called poljes, which flood in winter and dry out in summer. Popovo Polje, on the Bosnian side of the border, is one of the largest, and at its edge, near the village of Zavala, lies Vjetrenica, the most famous cave in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its name means wind cave, from the strong current of air that blows out of its entrance, cool in summer and noticeable from a distance.
Read the complete Vjetrenica Cave write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vjetrenica Cave, about halfway. Next is back through Lokrum Island.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lokrum Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Lokrum Island sits at 152 km, about halfway. Next is back through St. Barbara, 38 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete St. Barbara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through St. Barbara comes up about 238 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fortified city of Kotor.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fortified city of Kotor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fortified city of Kotor closes the day.
Fortified city of Kotor → St. Barbara is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
St. Barbara → Lokrum Island is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lokrum Island → Vjetrenica Cave is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vjetrenica Cave → back through Lokrum Island is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Lokrum Island → back through St. Barbara is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through St. Barbara → Fortified city of Kotor is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.