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 Leiderdorp it runs 319 km to Leiderdorp; allow about 4 h 47 of riding. On the way it passes Van Nellefabriek, Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg, Works along the IJ before Diemerdam and Dutch Water Defence Lines. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 35 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Leiden gave the world a university, a painter and a puzzle about a Roman fort. The fort was called Matilo, and it stood on the south bank of the Oude Rijn, the old arm of the Rhine, in what is now the Roomburg district west of the old town, between about AD 40 and 270. It guarded the frontier that ran along the river from Germany to the sea, with a garrison of auxiliary troops and a civilian settlement beside it, and its name survives on the Roman road maps. Today the site is a green park, Park Matilo, where the outlines of the fort are marked out, and information panels tell the story. The Lower German Limes was inscribed by UNESCO in 2021.
Read the complete Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo is where the day begins. Next is Van Nellefabriek.
The Van Nelle factory, on the edge of Rotterdam, is one of the most beautiful industrial buildings ever made. Built between 1925 and 1931 for a company that processed coffee, tea and tobacco, it is a long, light building of glass and steel, with curtain walls that let daylight flood into the workspaces. The designers, Johannes Brinkman and Leendert van der Vlugt, created what became an icon of modernist architecture, a factory of light and air for its workers. It was added to the UNESCO list in 2014.
Read the complete Van Nellefabriek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Van Nellefabriek comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg.
Two thousand years ago the Rhine marked the northern edge of the Roman Empire here, and along its southern bank the army built a chain of forts, watchtowers and a road to link them. In the western suburbs of Utrecht, in the new district of Leidsche Rijn and the old village of De Meern, that road has been found again under the fields, a gravel and clay embankment with ditches either side, and part of it can be traced along the street called Zandweg. Nearby, at Castellum Hoge Woerd, the outline of a Roman fort has been rebuilt in a modern form, with a museum, a theatre and an observatory, and a flat-bottomed Roman river barge, found here in 1997 almost intact and complete with the cargo and personal belongings of its skipper, is on display. The Lower German Limes became a World Heritage site in 2021.
Read the complete Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 88 km into the recorded legs you reach Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg. Next is Works along the IJ before Diemerdam.
Just east of Amsterdam, where the city's suburbs give way to water and polders, a narrow strip of land runs out along the old shore of the IJ and the IJmeer toward Muiden. The Diemerdam is an old dike, and the works along the IJ before it are part of the Dutch Water Defence Lines, the system of forts, dikes, sluices and inundation fields that the Dutch built over centuries to defend their cities by flooding the land around them. The Defence Line of Amsterdam, a ring of forts around the capital, was listed by UNESCO in 1996 and later joined with the New Dutch Waterline into a single site.
Read the complete Works along the IJ before Diemerdam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Works along the IJ before Diemerdam, about halfway. Next is Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Forget mountains and passes: the Dutch defended Amsterdam with water. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, the army built a ring of forts around the capital at a distance of roughly fifteen to twenty kilometres, the Stelling van Amsterdam, designed to flood the surrounding polders to a depth too shallow for boats but too deep to wade through. Forty-odd forts, along with dykes, sluices and batteries, formed the ring, and the area north of the city near De Rijp and the Beemster was part of it. The Defence Line of Amsterdam gained World Heritage status in 1996, and in 2021 it was extended to include the older New Dutch Waterline further south, the whole now known as the Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Read the complete Dutch Water Defence Lines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dutch Water Defence Lines sits at 168 km, about halfway. Next is back through Works along the IJ before Diemerdam.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Works along the IJ before Diemerdam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Works along the IJ before Diemerdam comes up about 198 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 233 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg. Next is back through Van Nellefabriek.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Van Nellefabriek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Van Nellefabriek, late in the day. Next is Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 319 km.
Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo → Van Nellefabriek is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Van Nellefabriek → Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg → Works along the IJ before Diemerdam is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Works along the IJ before Diemerdam → Dutch Water Defence Lines is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dutch Water Defence Lines → back through Works along the IJ before Diemerdam is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Works along the IJ before Diemerdam → back through Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg → back through Van Nellefabriek is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Van Nellefabriek → Leiden-Roomburg | Park Matilo is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.