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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Stuttgart Feuerbach it runs 350 km to Stuttgart Feuerbach; allow about 6 h 02 of riding. On the way it passes Hamberg Ditch, Speyer Cathedral, Old Jewish Cemetery Worms and Abbey and Altenmünster of Lorsch. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 63 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
In 1927, on a hillside overlooking Stuttgart, a group of the most radical architects in Europe built an entire housing estate in a few months as an exhibition of what modern living could look like. The Weissenhof Estate, organised by the Deutscher Werkbund under the direction of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, brought together Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Hans Scharoun, J.J.P. Oud and others, and their flat-roofed, white-walled houses became a manifesto for the International Style.
Read the complete Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung is where the day begins. Next is Hamberg Ditch.
Maulbronn is a small town in the folded country where the Kraichgau meets the Stromberg hills, and its Cistercian monastery is the best-preserved medieval monastery north of the Alps. The Hamberg ditch belongs to a very different part of the story, the hydrology that kept the monks fed and powered. The Cistercians were famous engineers, and at Maulbronn they dug ditches, built dams and shaped ponds so that the water supply could drive mills, fill fish ponds and flush drains. Parts of this system still survive in the surrounding woods, and UNESCO included the monastery and its water works in the 1993 listing.
Read the complete Hamberg Ditch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hamberg Ditch comes up about 44 km into the recorded legs. Next is Speyer Cathedral.
Some buildings impress you with height, others with mass. Speyer Cathedral does it with both, rising from the left bank of the Rhine with six towers and a long, rhythmic nave of red sandstone. It was begun around 1030 by the emperor Conrad II, the first of the Salian dynasty, and is generally considered the largest surviving Romanesque church in the world. Its crypt, a forest of sturdy columns and striped arches, holds the tombs of several emperors and kings, which tells you how central this town once was to the Holy Roman Empire.
Read the complete Speyer Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 107 km into the recorded legs you reach Speyer Cathedral. Next is Old Jewish Cemetery Worms.
The Heiliger Sand in Worms is the oldest surviving Jewish cemetery in Europe, with gravestones going back to the eleventh century. Weathered sandstone slabs lean at angles among the grass and trees, carved with Hebrew inscriptions, some barely legible after nearly a thousand years. Pebbles and small notes lie on many of them, left by visitors as a sign of remembrance, especially on the grave of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, a great scholar of the thirteenth century who died in captivity. Together with the synagogue and ritual bath of Worms and the Jewish sites of Speyer and Mainz, the cemetery forms the ShUM Sites, listed by UNESCO in 2021, recognising the Rhineland communities that shaped Ashkenazi Jewish culture in the Middle Ages.
Read the complete Old Jewish Cemetery Worms write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Old Jewish Cemetery Worms, about halfway. Next is Abbey and Altenmünster of Lorsch.
Lorsch looks like a regular small town of the Hessian Bergstrasse, and then you see the Torhalle, a little gatehouse of red and white stone with an arcade at the bottom and a pitched roof above, which is one of the very few surviving buildings of the Carolingian age in Germany. The abbey was founded in 764, rose to enormous wealth and influence under Charlemagne's family, and its library produced and preserved a startling number of manuscripts. The Lorsch Pharmacopoeia, written around 795, is one of the earliest known medical texts from German lands, and the monks' collection of books is scattered through libraries in Rome, Heidelberg and the Vatican today. UNESCO listed the abbey and nearby Altenmünster in 1991.
Read the complete Abbey and Altenmünster of Lorsch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Abbey and Altenmünster of Lorsch sits at 175 km, about halfway. Next is back through Old Jewish Cemetery Worms.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Old Jewish Cemetery Worms write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Old Jewish Cemetery Worms comes up about 197 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Speyer Cathedral.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Speyer Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 245 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Speyer Cathedral. Next is back through Hamberg Ditch.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hamberg Ditch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hamberg Ditch, late in the day. Next is Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 350 km.
Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung → Hamberg Ditch is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hamberg Ditch → Speyer Cathedral is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Speyer Cathedral → Old Jewish Cemetery Worms is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Old Jewish Cemetery Worms → Abbey and Altenmünster of Lorsch is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Abbey and Altenmünster of Lorsch → back through Old Jewish Cemetery Worms is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Old Jewish Cemetery Worms → back through Speyer Cathedral is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Speyer Cathedral → back through Hamberg Ditch is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hamberg Ditch → Maisons de la Weissenhof-Siedlung is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.