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 Bad Ems it runs 160 km to Bad Ems; allow about 2 h 59 of riding. The stops in between: Upper Middle Rhine Valley, Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen, Watchtower SP 3/5* and back through Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 27 km this is Moselle Wine Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Bad Ems sits in a narrow, wooded bend of the Lahn river, where the valley is so steep that the town seems poured into the gap. It has been a spa since the Middle Ages, and by the nineteenth century it was one of the most fashionable in Europe. Kings, tsars and composers came to take the thermal waters, and the town is filled with grand hotels, a colonnaded Kurhaus and a Russian Orthodox church built for the Tsarist visitors. Dostoevsky came to take the cure in the 1870s, and in 1870 an incident in the park gave the town a place in history books.
Read the complete Limessection between watchtowers WP 1/93 a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Limessection between watchtowers WP 1/93 a is where the day begins. Next is Upper Middle Rhine Valley.
Between Bingen and Koblenz, the Rhine cuts a deep, winding gorge through the slate hills of the Rhenish Massif, and for centuries this has been one of the great landscapes of Europe: steep slopes covered with vineyards, castles on every crag, villages of half-timbered houses along the river, and barges gliding past. The Upper Middle Rhine Valley was listed by UNESCO in 2002, and Sankt Goarshausen sits at its heart, at the foot of the most famous rock on the river.
Read the complete Upper Middle Rhine Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Upper Middle Rhine Valley comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen.
Up on the high, rolling plateau between the Rhine and the Lahn, where the Taunus fades into fields and beech woods, the Romans built one of the better preserved stone forts on the Upper German Limes. Holzhausen an der Haide is a quiet village of a little over a thousand people, and the fort sits just outside it in the trees, the outline of its walls still traceable on the ground, with the gates and corner towers marked out where the stone survives. It is part of the UNESCO-listed frontier that once ran from the Rhine near Koblenz all the way to the Danube, a line of palisade, ditch, watchtowers and garrisons meant less to stop armies than to control who came and went, and what they paid for the privilege.
Read the complete Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 51 km into the recorded legs you reach Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen. Next is Watchtower SP 3/5*.
Taunusstein did not exist as a town until 1971, when ten villages on the high plateau north of Wiesbaden were merged into one municipality, and so it has no old centre, just a cluster of former villages, each with its church, its half-timbered houses and its fields. One of them, Wehen, gave its name to the football club SV Wehen Wiesbaden, which started here before moving to the city. The Roman frontier ran along the edge of this plateau, and watchtower SP 3/5, close to the line, is one of the many small sites that mark it in the forest between Taunusstein and Idstein.
Read the complete Watchtower SP 3/5* write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtower SP 3/5*, about halfway. Next is back through Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen sits at 99 km, about halfway. Next is back through Upper Middle Rhine Valley.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Upper Middle Rhine Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Upper Middle Rhine Valley comes up about 133 km into the recorded legs. Next is Limessection between watchtowers WP 1/93 a.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Limessection between watchtowers WP 1/93 a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Limessection between watchtowers WP 1/93 a closes the day.
Limessection between watchtowers WP 1/93 a → Upper Middle Rhine Valley is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Upper Middle Rhine Valley → Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen → Watchtower SP 3/5* is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtower SP 3/5* → back through Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fortsite of Holzhausen and civil settlemen → back through Upper Middle Rhine Valley is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Upper Middle Rhine Valley → Limessection between watchtowers WP 1/93 a is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.