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 Longwy it runs 154 km to Longwy; allow about 2 h 21 of riding. On the way it passes City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F, Igel Column and back through City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F. It crosses France, Luxembourg and Germany - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules.
The ride follows Luxembourg Mullerthal Route for 39 km.
For about 38 km this is Luxembourg Mullerthal Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
In 1678, after Louis XIV won Longwy from the Spanish Netherlands in the Treaty of Nijmegen, he sent his great military engineer Vauban to make sure nobody took it back. Vauban did not just fortify the old town; he built a new one, Longwy-Haut, on the plateau, designing a star-shaped stronghold with bastions, ditches and a geometric grid of streets around a central square with a well and church. It is one of the twelve sites grouped as the Fortifications of Vauban on the World Heritage list, and walking the ramparts you can still read the logic of seventeenth-century siege warfare in the earth and stone.
Read the complete La place forte de Longwy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La place forte de Longwy is where the day begins. Next is City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F.
Luxembourg City is built on a rocky plateau above the deep, green valleys of the Alzette and Pétrusse rivers, and for centuries it was one of the most powerful fortresses in Europe, nicknamed the Gibraltar of the North. Spanish, French, Austrian and Prussian armies all held it, and each added to its walls, bastions and tunnels. In 1867, after an international treaty, most of the fortifications were dismantled, but enough remains to make the old quarters and fortifications a UNESCO World Heritage site, inscribed in 1994.
Read the complete City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F comes up about 39 km into the recorded legs. Next is Igel Column.
The Igel Column is one of those Roman monuments that seems to have survived by a happy accident. It stands in the village of Igel, on the Moselle a few kilometres upstream from Trier, a sandstone pillar some twenty-three metres high, covered with carved scenes. It was built in the third century as a funerary monument for the Secundinii, a family of wealthy cloth merchants, and the reliefs show them at work: bales of cloth being loaded and transported, customers being received, and a family meal, as well as mythological scenes on the upper sections. In the Middle Ages, people came to believe it showed the marriage of Constantine's mother, St Helena, which probably saved it from being broken up for building stone.
Read the complete Igel Column write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 77 km into the recorded legs you reach Igel Column. Next is back through City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F, late in the day. Next is La place forte de Longwy.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La place forte de Longwy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at La place forte de Longwy. That is the ride.
La place forte de Longwy → City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F → Igel Column is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Igel Column → back through City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and F → La place forte de Longwy is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.