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.
A 340 km round trip from Posillipo - roughly 6 h 19 in the saddle. It goes by way of Torre Annunziata: Villa A, Costiera Amalfitana, Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region and back through Costiera Amalfitana. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 41 km this is Amalfi Coast Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
There is a song about Marechiaro, and for once the song is not exaggerating. The little fishing hamlet on the Posillipo headland, at the western edge of the Bay of Naples, inspired a poem by Salvatore Di Giacomo in the 1880s about a window and a flower, and Francesco Paolo Tosti set it to music, so that "Marechiare" has been sung in Neapolitan kitchens and concert halls ever since. Locals will point out the so-called Fenestella, a small window on a wall above the sea, as the very one. Whether the poet had it in mind or not is a matter for a pleasant argument over a plate of fried fish.
Read the complete Marechiaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Marechiaro is where the day begins. Next is Torre Annunziata: Villa A.
In the busy, scruffy town of Torre Annunziata, on the coast south of Naples, a high wall hides one of the most extraordinary Roman villas ever found. Villa A at Oplontis, often called the Villa of Poppaea because it is thought to have belonged to the family of Nero's second wife, was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 and rediscovered in the eighteenth century, with large-scale excavations in the twentieth. It is part of the UNESCO site that includes Pompeii and Herculaneum, but sees a fraction of their visitors, which is one of its great pleasures.
Read the complete Torre Annunziata: Villa A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Torre Annunziata: Villa A comes up about 32 km into the recorded legs. Next is Costiera Amalfitana.
The Amalfi coast road is the reason many riders first dreamed of Italy, and it lives up to the legend and then some, with a few catches. The SS163 Amalfitana, carved into the cliffs above the sea in the nineteenth century, winds along the southern side of the Sorrento peninsula from Positano to Vietri sul Mare, with hundreds of bends, sheer drops, tunnels, bridges and villages clinging to the rocks. Amalfi itself, a small town of about five thousand people at the mouth of a ravine, was once a powerful maritime republic that rivalled Venice and Genoa in the Middle Ages, and its cathedral, with its striped facade and Arab-Norman cloister, is a reminder of that glory.
Read the complete Costiera Amalfitana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 73 km into the recorded legs you reach Costiera Amalfitana. Next is Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region.
According to legend, the siren Leucosia threw herself into the sea here after failing to lure Odysseus to his doom, and her body became the little island off Punta Licosa. It is a fine story for a fine place. Punta Licosa is a low, wild headland on the coast of the Cilento, south of Salerno, covered in Mediterranean scrub, pines and holm oaks, with rocky coves and clear water, and it forms part of the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, listed by UNESCO in 1998 as a cultural landscape. Behind it rises Monte Stella, the mountain that gives its name to the surrounding hills, dotted with small villages and terraced olive groves.
Read the complete Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region, about halfway. Next is back through Costiera Amalfitana.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Costiera Amalfitana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Costiera Amalfitana sits at 165 km, about halfway. Next is back through Torre Annunziata: Villa A.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Torre Annunziata: Villa A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Torre Annunziata: Villa A comes up about 307 km into the recorded legs. Next is Marechiaro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Marechiaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Marechiaro closes the day.
Marechiaro → Torre Annunziata: Villa A is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Torre Annunziata: Villa A → Costiera Amalfitana is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Costiera Amalfitana → Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region is 96 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region → back through Costiera Amalfitana is 97 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Costiera Amalfitana → back through Torre Annunziata: Villa A is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Torre Annunziata: Villa A → Marechiaro is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.