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 Marienberg it runs 242 km to Marienberg; allow about 3 h 47 of riding. On the way it passes Žatec, Karlovy Vary and back through Žatec. It crosses from Germany into Czechia - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
In 1521 Duke Heinrich of Saxony founded a new town in the Ore Mountains to house miners drawn by recent silver strikes, and he had it laid out on a regular grid around a huge square market place, following Renaissance ideas of the ideal city. Marienberg is the result, and its plan is still clearly visible, with straight streets, the town church, the Zschopau gate and a stretch of town wall. The town is part of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region, the cross-border World Heritage Site inscribed in 2019, which recognises eight hundred years of mining in these mountains.
Read the complete Marienberg Mining Town write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Marienberg Mining Town is where the day begins. Next is Žatec.
The smell gives Žatec away in late summer. The fields around this small town in northwestern Bohemia are planted with hops, tall green vines climbing up wires on wooden poles, and when harvest comes in August, the air fills with their resinous, slightly bitter scent. Saaz hops, named after the German form of the town's name, have been prized by brewers for centuries for their fine aroma, and they are a key ingredient in Czech pilsner lagers. In 2023, UNESCO inscribed Žatec and the Landscape of Saaz Hops, recognising the town's hop warehouses, drying kilns, packing houses and the surrounding hop gardens as a unique agricultural and industrial heritage.
Read the complete Žatec write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Žatec comes up about 54 km into the recorded legs. Next is Karlovy Vary.
Legend has it that Emperor Charles IV was out hunting in the forests of western Bohemia in the fourteenth century when a stag he was chasing, or in some versions one of his hounds, fell into a pool of scalding water, and that is how the hot springs of Karlovy Vary were found. Whatever the truth, the town that grew up around them bears his name, Karlsbad in German, and by the nineteenth century it had become one of the most fashionable spas in Europe, visited by tsars, composers, poets and the cream of European society. In 2021, it became part of the UNESCO listing of the Great Spa Towns of Europe.
Read the complete Karlovy Vary write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 120 km into the recorded legs you reach Karlovy Vary. Next is back through Žatec.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Žatec write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Žatec, late in the day. Next is Marienberg Mining Town.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Marienberg Mining Town write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Marienberg Mining Town. That is the ride.
Marienberg Mining Town → Žatec is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Žatec → Karlovy Vary is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Karlovy Vary → back through Žatec is 67 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Žatec → Marienberg Mining Town is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.