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 335 km round trip from Biyang - roughly 6 h 41 in the saddle. On the way it passes Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site, Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry S and back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
From above, Hongcun is said to look like an ox, and the people who built it in the Southern Song and later planned it that way on purpose. A stream, channelled through the village, makes the ox's intestines, two small bridges are the legs, a moon-shaped pond at the centre is its stomach and the hills around are its body, and a pair of ancient trees at the entrance are the horns. It is an engineer's dream as well as a feng shui chart, because the water channels run through the lanes to every house, bringing fresh water for washing and putting out fires, and the Moon Pond is a reflecting pool that mirrors the white walls and curved gables.
Read the complete Hongcun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hongcun is where the day begins. Next is Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site.
The word kaolin comes from Gaoling, a village in the hills north-east of Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi province, where the white clay used in making porcelain was mined for centuries. Porcelain needed two ingredients: kaolin and porcelain stone, a rock that, when crushed and refined, gave the paste its translucency. The hills around Jingdezhen were full of both, and the Changling porcelain stone mining site is one of the places where the stone was quarried, crushed by water-powered hammers and refined into bricks that were carried to the kilns of the porcelain capital of the world.
Read the complete Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site comes up about 119 km into the recorded legs. Next is Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry S.
For a thousand years, the best porcelain in China, and for much of that time the best in the world, came from Jingdezhen. The city, in the north east of Jiangxi province, grew up around imperial kilns that produced fine ceramics for the emperors, and its blue and white porcelain was exported across Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The secret of its success lay partly in the hills around the city, where the white clay known as kaolin was mined. The word kaolin itself comes from Gaoling, a village in the hills north east of Jingdezhen, where the clay was first dug. The point on this ride lies in that countryside, between the city and the old clay mines, in a landscape of wooded hills, tea plantations, rivers and villages.
Read the complete Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry S write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 167 km into the recorded legs you reach Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry S. Next is back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site, late in the day. Next is Hongcun.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hongcun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Hongcun. That is the ride.
Hongcun → Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site is 119 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site → Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry S is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry S → back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site → Hongcun is 119 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.