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 346 km round trip from Arona - roughly 5 h 36 in the saddle. It goes by way of Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine, Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria and back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,750 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Just south of Arona, at the southern tip of Lago Maggiore, a small regional park protects a landscape of woods, meadows and peat bogs called the Lagoni di Mercurago. The lagoni are small ponds and wetlands formed after the retreat of the glaciers, and in the nineteenth century, while peat was being dug, the remains of a Bronze Age pile dwelling settlement were found here, including a wooden wheel. Mercurago is part of the UNESCO site of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps.
Read the complete Mercurago write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mercurago is where the day begins. Next is Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine.
Oropa is a sanctuary on a scale that surprises everyone who comes up the valley from Biella for the first time. At almost twelve hundred metres, in a bowl of mountains, a vast complex of churches, courtyards, porticoes and pilgrim lodgings rises in terraces, built over several centuries around an ancient chapel that holds a Black Madonna, a wooden statue of the Virgin that legend attributes to St Luke. Above the main buildings, a Sacro Monte of chapels with life-size statues illustrates the life of Mary along a wooded path. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy listed by UNESCO in 2003, and one of the most important Marian shrines in the Alps.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine comes up about 78 km into the recorded legs. Next is Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria.
The Parco La Mandria, north-west of Turin, is the largest remnant of the royal hunting estates of the House of Savoy, and the Borgo Castello at its centre was once the heart of the estate. The word mandria means a herd, and the park began as a stud and breeding farm for horses and cattle on the plain, with the woods kept for the hunt. Today the park is a protected area of about three thousand hectares, surrounded by a wall, where visitors walk or cycle between oaks, hornbeams and meadows, and where deer and wild boar still live.
Read the complete Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 182 km into the recorded legs you reach Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria. Next is back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine, late in the day. Next is Mercurago.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mercurago write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Mercurago. That is the ride.
Mercurago → Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 78 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria is 104 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria → back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 94 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → Mercurago is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.