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.
317 km from Dimona to Dimona, about 4 h 55 of riding. It goes by way of Tel Beer Sheba, Haluza, Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer and back through Haluza. It crosses from Israel into Palestinian Territories - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Mamshit sits on a low spur above a dry riverbed in the northern Negev, a few kilometres east of Dimona, and from a distance it looks like nothing more than a heap of pale stones. Up close it becomes a town: streets, courtyards, staircases, arches, two Byzantine churches with mosaic floors and a set of large houses built by people who knew how to live comfortably in a hard place. This was Mampsis, a Nabataean settlement on the caravan routes that carried incense and spices from Arabia across the desert to the Mediterranean ports, and it shares a World Heritage inscription with Avdat, Haluza and Shivta as one of the desert cities of the Incense Route.
Read the complete Mamshit write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mamshit is where the day begins. Next is Tel Beer Sheba.
Tel Beer Sheba is a mound on the edge of the modern city of Beersheba, in the northern Negev desert of southern Israel, and it holds the remains of an Iron Age town that has been excavated and partially reconstructed. With Megiddo and Hazor, it forms the UNESCO site of the Biblical Tels, recognized for their importance in understanding the cities of the biblical era. The name Beersheba appears many times in the Bible, associated with Abraham and the wells he dug in the desert.
Read the complete Tel Beer Sheba write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tel Beer Sheba comes up about 45 km into the recorded legs. Next is Haluza.
Halutza is a ghost of a city in the sand. Founded by the Nabataeans as a waystation on the incense route from Arabia to the Mediterranean, it grew in the Roman and Byzantine periods into the most important city of the Negev, known in Greek as Elusa, with a theatre, churches and a famous school of rhetoric. Then it faded, the sand moved in, and today only fragments of walls, a small theatre and the remains of churches poke out of the dunes south-west of Beersheba. It is part of the UNESCO-listed Incense Route and desert cities of the Negev, along with Avdat, Mamshit and Shivta.
Read the complete Haluza write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 96 km into the recorded legs you reach Haluza. Next is Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer.
Saint Hilarion was born around 291 in a village near Gaza and grew up to be the founder of monasticism in Palestine. He studied in Alexandria, was inspired by the desert hermit Anthony, and returned home to live a life of such strict simplicity that disciples followed him and settled around him. The monastery that grew up here, at the site known today as Tell Umm Amer, became one of the largest in the Middle East, with churches, a bathhouse, hostels and workshops, and it functioned for several centuries until the seventh century. Hilarion himself eventually left, wandered through Egypt, Sicily and Dalmatia and died in Cyprus around 371, but the monastery kept his name.
Read the complete Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer, about halfway. Next is back through Haluza.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Haluza write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Haluza sits at 187 km, about halfway. Next is back through Tel Beer Sheba.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tel Beer Sheba write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tel Beer Sheba comes up about 270 km into the recorded legs. Next is Mamshit.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mamshit write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mamshit closes the day.
Mamshit → Tel Beer Sheba is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tel Beer Sheba → Haluza is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Haluza → Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer → back through Haluza is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Haluza → back through Tel Beer Sheba is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tel Beer Sheba → Mamshit is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.