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 351 km round trip from Carucedo - roughly 4 h 51 in the saddle. On the way it passes Roman Walls of Lugo, Cathedrale de Mondonedo and back through Roman Walls of Lugo. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Scenic road chapters
Roman Walls of Lugo → Cathedrale de Mondonedo
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 66 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Chapter facts
Length
60 km
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Las Médulas
Walk into Las Médulas on a clear autumn morning and you meet a strange kind of silence. The red crags stand around you like the ruins of a cathedral built from clay, and the chestnut trees, some of them centuries old, drop their husks onto the path. It is a landscape made by an empire and then forgotten by it, left to grow over for nearly two thousand years.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Las Médulas is where the day begins. Next is Roman Walls of Lugo.
2. Roman Walls of Lugo
Lugo is the only city in the world still completely surrounded by intact Roman walls. Built in the late third century, when the Roman Empire was under pressure from invasions, the walls run for more than two kilometres around the old town, with dozens of semicircular towers and ten gates, some Roman and some added later. They are wide enough at the top for a walkway, and walking the full circuit, with views over the rooftops of the old town on one side and the modern city on the other, is the best way to get a sense of the place. The walls were listed by UNESCO in 2000.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Roman Walls of Lugo comes up about 115 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cathedrale de Mondonedo.
3. Cathedrale de Mondonedo
Mondoñedo is a small cathedral city in the north of Galicia, tucked into a green valley of the Masma river between the Cantabrian coast and the hills of the interior. With barely five thousand people it is one of the smallest places in Spain to have a cathedral, and the building is the reason the town exists. It was begun in the late twelfth century and finished over several centuries, with a Romanesque core, Gothic vaults and a Baroque west front with two towers. Inside, there are medieval wall paintings in the cloister and a fine stone choir, and the whole is built from the grey local granite, which turns green with lichen and gold in the evening sun.