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 Vledder it runs 381 km to Vledder; allow about 5 h 31 of riding. It goes by way of Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker, Key Planning Decision and back through Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
In 1818, after years of war, famine and poverty, a former general named Johannes van den Bosch founded the Society of Benevolence in the Netherlands, with a radical idea: to take poor families from the cities and give them a new life as farmers in the empty heathlands of the north east. The first colony was established at Frederiksoord, in the south of Drenthe, and others followed at Wilhelminaoord, Willemsoord, Veenhuizen and elsewhere. Each family was given a small house, a plot of land and training in farming, and children were educated in schools, an unusual provision for the time. The Colonies of Benevolence, in the Netherlands and Belgium, were listed by UNESCO in 2021.
Read the complete Frederiksoord-Wilhelminaoord write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Frederiksoord-Wilhelminaoord is where the day begins. Next is Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker.
Eise Eisinga was a wool comber in the Frisian town of Franeker, not a professional astronomer, and in the 1770s he built the solar system on his living-room ceiling. The story goes that in 1774 a local pastor predicted that the planets would align and bring disaster, and the town panicked. Eisinga, who knew some mathematics, wanted to show the real movements, and over the next seven years he built a scale model of the planets, with a clockwork mechanism hidden in the attic that still moves them today. It is generally described as the oldest working planetarium in the world, and it was listed by UNESCO in 2023.
Read the complete Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker comes up about 73 km into the recorded legs. Next is Key Planning Decision.
The name on the map is bureaucratic, but the place is anything but. Key Planning Decision is a translation of the Dutch legal designation used to protect the Wadden Sea, and the spot here sits on the coast near Delfzijl, at the eastern edge of the province of Groningen, where the Dutch Wadden meets the estuary of the Ems. The Wadden Sea is the largest unbroken system of tidal flats in the world, stretching along the coasts of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, and it was listed by UNESCO in 2009.
Read the complete Key Planning Decision write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 195 km into the recorded legs you reach Key Planning Decision. Next is back through Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker, late in the day. Next is Frederiksoord-Wilhelminaoord.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Frederiksoord-Wilhelminaoord write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Frederiksoord-Wilhelminaoord. That is the ride.
Frederiksoord-Wilhelminaoord → Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker is 73 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker → Key Planning Decision is 122 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Key Planning Decision → back through Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker is 114 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker → Frederiksoord-Wilhelminaoord is 72 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.