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 339 km round trip from Keutschach am See - roughly 5 h 11 in the saddle. The stops in between: Church of St. Francis of Assisi, Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on and back through Church of St. Francis of Assisi. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Austria into Slovenia - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 85 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Keutschacher See is one of the warm little lakes of Carinthia, tucked into the rolling moraine country south of the Wörthersee, where glaciers of the last ice age left a jumble of hills, hollows and water. It is small and shallow, with reeds at the edges and pine and beech woods around it, and in summer it warms to a temperature that makes the Alpine lakes a few valleys away seem Arctic. Locals swim from jetties and lawns, and the nearby village of Keutschach am See is a quiet place of fewer than five hundred people.
Read the complete Keutschacher See write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Keutschacher See is where the day begins. Next is Church of St. Francis of Assisi, 73 km on.
Ljubljana's Church of Saint Francis of Assisi stands in the Šiška district, north-west of the old centre, and it is one of the buildings by Jože Plečnik that UNESCO listed in 2021. Plečnik was born in Ljubljana in 1872, trained in Vienna under Otto Wagner, and worked in Prague, where he renovated the castle for the first Czechoslovak president, before returning to his home city in 1921. He spent the next decades remaking Ljubljana in his own style, with bridges, markets, a library and gardens, mixing classical forms with a personal, almost playful imagination. The church in Šiška, built in the late 1920s, is among his strangest and most original buildings.
Read the complete Church of St. Francis of Assisi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church of St. Francis of Assisi comes up about 99 km into the recorded legs. Next is Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on.
The Klavže at Idrijska Bela are a surprising piece of engineering, a huge stone wall built across a narrow gorge in the eighteenth century, with a gate in the middle. The idea was brilliant and simple. The mercury mine at Idrija, one of the largest in Europe, needed vast quantities of timber for its shafts and furnaces, and the forests were in the hills, far from the town. So the woodcutters piled logs behind the barrier, the gate was opened and the stored water carried the logs in a rush down the stream to the mine. Such water barriers, called klavže in Slovenian, were used here for generations, and the one named after Putrih is among the grandest.
Read the complete Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 169 km into the recorded legs you reach Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on. Next is back through Church of St. Francis of Assisi, 73 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Church of St. Francis of Assisi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Church of St. Francis of Assisi, late in the day. Next is Keutschacher See.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Keutschacher See write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Keutschacher See. That is the ride.
Keutschacher See → Church of St. Francis of Assisi is 99 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Church of St. Francis of Assisi → Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Idrijska Bela - Putrih’s Water Barrier on → back through Church of St. Francis of Assisi is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Church of St. Francis of Assisi → Keutschacher See is 99 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.