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.
An 851 km round trip from Ahmetli - roughly 42 h 39 in the saddle. The stops in between: Ayasuluk Hill, Pythagoreion and Heraion of Samos and back through Ayasuluk Hill. It crosses from Türkiye into Greece - carry ID and check the toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Bin Tepe means a thousand mounds, and the name is only a mild exaggeration. On a low ridge north of the Gediz river plain, a few kilometres from the shore of Lake Marmara, the kings and nobles of ancient Lydia were buried under hundreds of earth tumuli, some of them enormous. Lydia, with its capital at Sardis, was the kingdom of Croesus, whose name became a byword for wealth, and the first state in the world to mint coins from electrum, the natural gold and silver alloy washed down from the mountains. The mounds date mostly from the seventh to the sixth centuries BC, and they were the funeral monuments of a rich, confident civilisation.
Read the complete Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe is where the day begins. Next is Ayasuluk Hill.
The hill of Ayasuluk is where old Ephesus went to live when the harbour silted up. As the sea retreated from the ancient city and the Cayster river filled the bay with mud, the people drifted north-east to this ridge, which already held a shrine to St John, and a new town grew around it. Tradition says that John the Evangelist spent his last years in Ephesus and was buried here, and in the sixth century the emperor Justinian built a huge domed basilica over the supposed tomb, with a marble floor and a nave of great length. The ruins stand on the slope today, with fragments of columns and arches, and you can walk among them in the shade of cypresses.
Read the complete Ayasuluk Hill write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ayasuluk Hill comes up about 135 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pythagoreion and Heraion of Samos.
Two things that the ancient Greeks did better than anyone are on show on this corner of Samos, and one of them is a tunnel. In the sixth century BC, the tyrant Polycrates ruled the island, and he commissioned an engineer from Megara, Eupalinos, to bring water to his capital through a mountain. The tunnel is about a kilometre long, and Eupalinos had his workers dig from both ends at once, meeting in the middle with an error of only a few metres, which is a stunning achievement for the time. Visitors can walk through a part of it today, in a hard hat, and the sloping channel for water still runs beside the walkway.
Read the complete Pythagoreion and Heraion of Samos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 429 km into the recorded legs you reach Pythagoreion and Heraion of Samos. Next is back through Ayasuluk Hill.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ayasuluk Hill write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ayasuluk Hill, late in the day. Next is Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe. That is the ride.
Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe → Ayasuluk Hill is 135 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Ayasuluk Hill → Pythagoreion and Heraion of Samos is 294 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pythagoreion and Heraion of Samos → back through Ayasuluk Hill is 294 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ayasuluk Hill → Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe is 128 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.