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 Encamp it runs 211 km to Encamp; allow about 4 h 13 of riding. It goes by way of Abric de la Vall d'Ingla, L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis and back through Abric de la Vall d'Ingla. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses Andorra, Spain and France - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. Rivers set the line for much of the day.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 45 km this is Ruta del Cares · N-260, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Andorra is famous for shopping and ski lifts, which makes the Madriu-Perafita-Claror valley a surprise. A glacial valley that runs up into the mountains from the edge of the capital's built-up area, it is a landscape of granite peaks, lakes, pastures and stone shepherd huts, almost untouched by roads. UNESCO listed it in 2004 as a cultural landscape because it shows, in one place, how people have lived in the high Pyrenees for thousands of years, with pastoral farming, iron forges and mountain paths shaping the land together.
Read the complete Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley is where the day begins. Next is Abric de la Vall d'Ingla.
The Cerdanya is a high, wide, sunny valley in the eastern Pyrenees, shared between Catalonia and France, and its southern wall is the long limestone barrier of the Serra del Cadí. The Vall d'Ingla cuts into that wall just above Bellver de Cerdanya and the neighbouring village of Éller, and the rock shelter there is one of the archaeological traces of people who used these valleys long before towns and borders. You are inside the Cadí-Moixeró Natural Park, a protected area of pine forest, cliffs and high pasture.
Read the complete Abric de la Vall d'Ingla write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Abric de la Vall d'Ingla comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis.
At around sixteen hundred metres, Mont-Louis is often described as the highest fortified town in France, and it feels like a frontier outpost even today. Vauban designed it in 1679 to guard the newly drawn border after the Treaty of the Pyrenees, placing it on a strategic shelf at the meeting of three valleys: the Têt dropping towards Perpignan, the Aude running north, and the wide basin of the Cerdanya opening to the west. The citadel is still used by the French army, home to a commando training centre, so parts of it are closed to visitors, but the walls and the small grid of streets inside them are free to wander.
Read the complete L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 106 km into the recorded legs you reach L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis. Next is back through Abric de la Vall d'Ingla.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abric de la Vall d'Ingla write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Abric de la Vall d'Ingla, late in the day. Next is Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley. That is the ride.
Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley → Abric de la Vall d'Ingla is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Abric de la Vall d'Ingla → L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
L’enceinte et la citadelle de Mont-Louis → back through Abric de la Vall d'Ingla is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Abric de la Vall d'Ingla → Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.