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 239 km round trip from Hebron - roughly 4 h 16 in the saddle. On the way it passes Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud, Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls, Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan and back through Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls. It crosses from Palestinian Territories into Israel - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 29 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Hebron, al-Khalil in Arabic, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the Middle East, set in the hills of the southern West Bank. Its heart is the old town, a warren of stone alleys, covered souqs and Mamluk-era houses, grouped around the great mosque built over the Cave of the Patriarchs, where tradition places the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives. The site is holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians, and its name in Arabic, al-Khalil, means the friend, a reference to Abraham as the friend of God.
Read the complete Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town is where the day begins. Next is Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud.
Beneath the low hills of the Judean lowlands, the Shephelah, lies a city of caves. Maresha was an important town of the Iron Age and the Hellenistic period, and its inhabitants carved thousands of chambers into the soft chalk beneath their houses: cisterns, olive presses, stables, quarries, burial caves and columbaria, rooms with hundreds of niches, probably used for raising pigeons. Nearby Bet Guvrin, known to the Romans as Eleutheropolis, became a major city in later centuries. The national park and its caves were listed by UNESCO in 2014 as a microcosm of the land of the caves.
Read the complete Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud comes up about 30 km into the recorded legs. Next is Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls.
Few square kilometres on earth carry as much weight as these. The Old City of Jerusalem holds sites sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, packed into a maze of stone lanes inside walls built by the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in the 1530s. The Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque lie within a few minutes' walk of each other, and the city's four traditional quarters, Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian, each have their own character, markets and rhythms. The Old City and its walls were added to the UNESCO list in 1981.
Read the complete Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 88 km into the recorded legs you reach Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls. Next is Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan.
Jericho is one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns on earth, and at Tell es-Sultan, on its northern edge, archaeologists have dug down through layers of settlement more than ten thousand years old. Among the finds is a great stone tower, built in the Neolithic, around eleven thousand years ago, long before writing, metal or the wheel, which is often called the oldest such tower in the world. The tell, with its trenches and mud brick walls, was listed as a World Heritage Site in 2023.
Read the complete Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan, about halfway. Next is back through Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls sits at 146 km, about halfway. Next is back through Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud comes up about 209 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town closes the day.
Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town → Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud → Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls → Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ancient Jericho/Tell es-Sultan → back through Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls → back through Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud → Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.