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 Karlovy Vary it runs 271 km to Karlovy Vary; allow about 4 h 28 of riding. It goes by way of Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape, Žatec and back through Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape. It crosses from Czechia into Germany - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Legend has it that Emperor Charles IV was out hunting in the forests of western Bohemia in the fourteenth century when a stag he was chasing, or in some versions one of his hounds, fell into a pool of scalding water, and that is how the hot springs of Karlovy Vary were found. Whatever the truth, the town that grew up around them bears his name, Karlsbad in German, and by the nineteenth century it had become one of the most fashionable spas in Europe, visited by tsars, composers, poets and the cream of European society. In 2021, it became part of the UNESCO listing of the Great Spa Towns of Europe.
Read the complete Karlovy Vary write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Karlovy Vary is where the day begins. Next is Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape.
Tin, not silver, was the business of Ehrenfriedersdorf. For around eight hundred years miners dug into the Sauberg hill above this small Erzgebirge town for tin ore, and the Ehrenfriedersdorf mining landscape, with its shafts, spoil heaps, ponds and ditches, is one of the components of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region World Heritage Site. The Sauberg visitor mine lets you go underground into galleries worked by generations of miners, and the hard hat, the damp cold and the drip of water make the history very physical.
Read the complete Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape comes up about 64 km into the recorded legs. Next is Žatec.
The smell gives Žatec away in late summer. The fields around this small town in northwestern Bohemia are planted with hops, tall green vines climbing up wires on wooden poles, and when harvest comes in August, the air fills with their resinous, slightly bitter scent. Saaz hops, named after the German form of the town's name, have been prized by brewers for centuries for their fine aroma, and they are a key ingredient in Czech pilsner lagers. In 2023, UNESCO inscribed Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops, recognising the town's hop warehouses, drying kilns, packing houses and the surrounding hop gardens as a unique agricultural and industrial heritage.
Read the complete Žatec write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 135 km into the recorded legs you reach Žatec. Next is back through Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape, late in the day. Next is Karlovy Vary.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Karlovy Vary write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Karlovy Vary. That is the ride.
Karlovy Vary → Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape → Žatec is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Žatec → back through Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Ehrenfriedersdorf Mining Landscape → Karlovy Vary is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.