CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 204 km round trip from Hoboken - roughly 3 h 06 in the saddle. The stops in between: Tour de Saint-Rombaut, Hôtel van Eetvelde, Beffroi de Gembloux and back through Hôtel van Eetvelde. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
In a leafy residential street in the southern suburbs of Antwerp, there is a white house that looks as if it has walked in from a different century. The Maison Guiette, as it is usually spelled, was designed by Le Corbusier in 1926 for the painter René Guiette, and it was his first building in Belgium. Since 2016 it has been one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of Le Corbusier's architectural work, alongside the Villa Savoye, the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille and buildings on several continents.
Read the complete Maison Guiete write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Maison Guiete is where the day begins. Next is Tour de Saint-Rombaut.
Saint Rumbold's Tower dominates the skyline of Mechelen like a very tall stone cliff. It is the bell tower of the cathedral, and it rises to about ninety-seven metres. It was begun in the fourteenth century and was meant to go higher, with a spire that would have made it among the tallest in Europe, but the money ran out and the tower was left with a flat top in the sixteenth century. That unfinished stump is somehow more memorable than a completed spire would have been. It is part of the UNESCO list of belfries of Belgium and France, and a ring of bells hangs inside, including two carillons, one of which is played by hand from a keyboard of wooden batons.
Read the complete Tour de Saint-Rombaut write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tour de Saint-Rombaut comes up 35 km in. Next is Hôtel van Eetvelde.
Victor Horta built this house between 1895 and 1898 for Edmond van Eetvelde, a senior official who ran the affairs of King Leopold II's Congo Free State from Brussels, and it is impossible now to look at it without holding both of those facts at once: one of the most daring houses of the Art Nouveau age, paid for in a world shaped by the brutal exploitation of the Congo. Hôtel van Eetvelde stands on the Avenue Palmerston near the Square Ambiorix, in the European quarter, and with three other Horta houses it was inscribed in 2000 as the Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta.
Read the complete Hôtel van Eetvelde write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
70 km in you reach Hôtel van Eetvelde. Next is Beffroi de Gembloux.
Gembloux grew up around a Benedictine abbey founded in the tenth century, and for most of its history the monks ran the show. The abbey buildings, rebuilt in a grand classical style in the eighteenth century, now house a university faculty of agricultural sciences, fitting for a town surrounded by some of the richest farmland in Belgium. The belfry, a solid tower that was once part of a church and later became the town's civic symbol, stands in the centre and is part of the UNESCO listing of belfries of Belgium and France. Climbing it gives views over the rooftops and across the open fields of the Hesbaye.
Read the complete Beffroi de Gembloux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Gembloux, about halfway. Next is back through Hôtel van Eetvelde.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hôtel van Eetvelde write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hôtel van Eetvelde sits at 141 km, about halfway. Next is back through Tour de Saint-Rombaut.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tour de Saint-Rombaut write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tour de Saint-Rombaut comes up 176 km in. Next is Maison Guiete.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Maison Guiete write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Maison Guiete closes the day.
Maison Guiete → Tour de Saint-Rombaut is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tour de Saint-Rombaut → Hôtel van Eetvelde is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hôtel van Eetvelde → Beffroi de Gembloux is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Gembloux → back through Hôtel van Eetvelde is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hôtel van Eetvelde → back through Tour de Saint-Rombaut is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tour de Saint-Rombaut → Maison Guiete is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.