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 Jingdezhen it runs 339 km to Jingdezhen; allow about 6 h 39 of riding. On the way it passes Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site, Ancient Villages in Southern Anhui - Xidi and back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site. The line favours views over speed.
Jingdezhen has been making porcelain for more than a thousand years, and the Hutian kiln site is one of the places where that story began to turn into an industry. The kilns here produced fine white and bluish-white ware in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and the heaps of broken shards and the remains of long dragon-shaped kilns show how potters adapted slopes of land to fire great quantities of pots at once. Later, in the Ming dynasty, imperial kilns were established in the town itself, and Jingdezhen became the porcelain capital of China, supplying emperors and, via the sea trade, markets from Japan to Europe.
Read the complete Hutian Ancient Kiln Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hutian Ancient Kiln Site 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 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ancient Villages in Southern Anhui - Xidi.
Xidi is a village that seems to have been left alone by the twentieth century. It lies in Yi county, on the southern side of the Yellow Mountains in Anhui, a landscape of green hills and rice fields where merchants of the Huizhou region made fortunes in salt, tea, timber and ink, and spent them at home on houses. The Hu clan, who founded the village, built lanes of whitewashed, black-tiled houses with high walls, carved wooden screens, small courtyards, and stone-framed doors, and in the sixteenth century they put up a great stone memorial arch in honour of an official of the clan. The name means west stream, after the water that runs through the village in channels beside the lanes.
Read the complete Ancient Villages in Southern Anhui - Xidi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 170 km into the recorded legs you reach Ancient Villages in Southern Anhui - Xidi. 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 Hutian Ancient Kiln Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hutian Ancient Kiln Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Hutian Ancient Kiln Site. That is the ride.
Hutian Ancient Kiln Site → Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site → Ancient Villages in Southern Anhui - Xidi is 108 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Ancient Villages in Southern Anhui - Xidi → back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site is 107 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site → Hutian Ancient Kiln Site is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.