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 Arona it runs 320 km to Arona; allow about 6 h 16 of riding. It goes by way of Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi, Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal, Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine and Ivrea. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,750 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
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 di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi.
Lake Orta is the quiet sister of Lake Maggiore, smaller, calmer and more mysterious, and on a wooded hill above its prettiest town stands a holy mountain dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi. The Sacro Monte di Orta is a path through a park of beech and chestnut trees, linking twenty chapels built from the end of the sixteenth century onward, each containing life-size terracotta statues and frescoes depicting scenes from the life of the saint. It is one of the nine holy mountains of Piedmont and Lombardy listed together by UNESCO in 2003, created during the Counter-Reformation as places of pilgrimage and devotion.
Read the complete Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi comes up about 23 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Varallo is a small town at the point where the Valsesia stops being a wide valley and starts becoming a mountain one, and above it, on a rocky spur reached by a winding road or a short cable car, is the oldest and most ambitious of the Sacri Monti. In 1491 a Franciscan friar called Bernardino Caimi, back from the Holy Land, set out to recreate Jerusalem here for pilgrims who could never make the journey. The result is a hilltop village of more than forty chapels filled with life-size painted terracotta and wooden figures, hundreds of them, telling the life of Christ like a frozen theatre. Gaudenzio Ferrari, the great Renaissance painter of this valley, worked on many of them.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 61 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal. 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, about halfway. Next is Ivrea.
Ivrea is the town Olivetti built, or at least rebuilt. In the twentieth century the Olivetti company, famous for typewriters, calculators and some of the first personal computers, turned this small Piedmontese town into a showcase of what industry could be: factories with glass walls and natural light, worker housing, libraries, nurseries and social services designed by the best architects of the day. Adriano Olivetti believed a company should serve its community, and the result was listed by UNESCO in 2018 as an industrial city of the twentieth century. Walk along Corso Jervis and you can see the buildings still standing, some reused, some waiting.
Read the complete Ivrea write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ivrea sits at 103 km, about halfway. 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 comes up about 197 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 258 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal. Next is back through Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi, 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.
The route ends here after 320 km.
Mercurago → Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi → Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → Ivrea is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ivrea → back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → back through Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi → Mercurago is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.