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 Karantaba it runs 382 km to Karantaba; allow about 6 h 52 of riding. It goes by way of Stone Circles of Senegambia, Kunta Kinteh Island and Related Sites and back through Stone Circles of Senegambia. It crosses from Gambia into Senegal - carry ID and check the toll rules. It stays on the island.
Stones that nobody can explain are scattered across the Gambian countryside, and Kerbatch has some of them. The stone circles of Senegambia, a World Heritage site since 2006, are a group of more than a thousand megaliths in about thirty circles, set in a band of land along the river Gambia and into Senegal. Each stone is a carved pillar of laterite, a rust-red, iron-rich rock that is cut from the ground when it is soft and hardens in the sun, and they stand in rings of ten to twenty, sometimes with a larger stone set to one side. They were raised between roughly the third century BC and the sixteenth century AD, and they mark burials, some of which have been excavated and found to hold skeletons and grave goods.
Read the complete Kerbatch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kerbatch is where the day begins. Next is Stone Circles of Senegambia.
The Gambia is a thin green country, shaped like a tongue lolling out of Senegal along the river that gives it its name, and its most intriguing monuments are its stones. Near Kerbatch, in the Central River Region, a group of circles of tall laterite pillars stands in open woodland, each circle made of upright stones as tall as a person, shaped by hand and set in a ring. They belong to the stone circles of Senegambia, which spread across the lands on both sides of the border, and number in the thousands, with several different groups listed together as a World Heritage property in 2006. The tradition of putting up such circles seems to have lasted from about the third century BC until the sixteenth century.
Read the complete Stone Circles of Senegambia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stone Circles of Senegambia comes up about 71 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kunta Kinteh Island and Related Sites.
In the brown tidal water of the River Gambia, some thirty kilometres from the Atlantic, a small low island of rock and scrub carries the ruins of a fort that mattered far beyond its size. For centuries Portuguese, Courlanders, English and French all fought to control this reach of the river, the gateway to the gold, ivory, wax and, above all, people that came down from the interior. The island was long called James Island, after a Stuart prince, and in 2011 its name was officially changed to Kunta Kinteh, after the ancestor in Alex Haley's novel Roots, who is said to have been taken from the nearby village of Juffureh. Whether or not the family story holds in every detail, the island stands for the whole trade, and the World Heritage listing covers the island and its related sites on the banks.
Read the complete Kunta Kinteh Island and Related Sites write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 192 km into the recorded legs you reach Kunta Kinteh Island and Related Sites. Next is back through Stone Circles of Senegambia.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stone Circles of Senegambia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Stone Circles of Senegambia, late in the day. Next is Kerbatch.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kerbatch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Kerbatch. That is the ride.
Kerbatch → Stone Circles of Senegambia is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Stone Circles of Senegambia → Kunta Kinteh Island and Related Sites is 121 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Kunta Kinteh Island and Related Sites → back through Stone Circles of Senegambia is 120 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Stone Circles of Senegambia → Kerbatch is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.