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.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Buchen in Odenwald it runs 400 km to Buchen in Odenwald; allow about 6 h 42 of riding. On the way it passes Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13, Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the, Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch and Lone Valley. It follows river valleys.
Holderbusch is a small piece of woodland above the Odenwald plateau, close to Buchen, where the Romans placed a fortlet on the Odenwald Limes about the middle of the second century. This part of the Upper Germanic frontier was, for much of its length, a simple palisade and ditch, running in an astonishingly straight line across hills and valleys from the Main to the Neckar. A fortlet was a small post, a few dozen soldiers behind a bank and ditch, and from here the watchtowers on each side could be reached on foot within minutes. The ground is marked by gentle swellings in the forest floor and a path with explanatory signs, and the walk takes less than half an hour.
Read the complete Fortlet Holderbusch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fortlet Holderbusch is where the day begins. Next is Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13.
Götz von Berlichingen, the knight with the iron hand, was born at Jagsthausen castle in about 1480, and he would probably be amused to know that he is best remembered today for a rude phrase. In Goethe's play about him, Götz tells an imperial messenger exactly what the emperor can do, a line that every German knows. The castle still stands in the village, now a hotel, and in summer the Burgfestspiele, an open-air theatre festival, stages the play in the castle courtyard. Long before Götz, the Romans were here too: a fort stood at Jagsthausen on the line of the Upper Germanic Limes, and in the hills around, a series of watchtowers, numbered by archaeologists as WP 9/2 to 9/13, kept watch along the frontier.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13 comes up about 39 km into the recorded legs. Next is Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the.
Mainhardt sits on a ridge in the Swabian-Franconian Forest, and the Roman frontier ran right through it, on its way south in one of the longest straight lines ever drawn across European landscape. Here, the Upper Germanic Limes runs for some eighty kilometres from Walldürn to near Welzheim almost perfectly straight, ignoring hills and valleys, as if surveyors had laid a ruler on the map. The watchtowers numbered in this section stood along that line in the forest, and Mainhardt had a fort, whose site is marked in the village, with a small museum.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 80 km into the recorded legs you reach Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the. 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.
Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch, about halfway. Next is Lone Valley.
The Lone is a small river in the Swabian Jura, east of Ulm, that often vanishes underground in dry weather, slipping into the limestone and leaving its bed empty. Its quiet valley, flanked by wooded slopes and limestone cliffs, holds caves where some of the oldest figurative art in the world was found. In the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave, fragments of a figure carved from mammoth ivory were pieced together into the Lion Man, a being with a human body and a lion's head, around forty thousand years old. In the Vogelherd cave, tiny ivory animals, a horse, a mammoth, a cave lion, emerged from the sediment.
Read the complete Lone Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lone Valley sits at 173 km, about halfway. Next is back through Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
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.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch comes up about 279 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 321 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the. Next is back through Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13, late in the day. Next is Fortlet Holderbusch.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fortlet Holderbusch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 400 km.
Fortlet Holderbusch → Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13 is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13 → Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the → Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch → Lone Valley is 79 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lone Valley → back through Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch is 78 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Lorsch → back through Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Watchtowers WP 9/70 to 9/99a including the → back through Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13 is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Watchtowers WP 9/2* to 9/13 → Fortlet Holderbusch is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.