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.
677 km from Steíri to Steíri, about 11 h 43 of riding. It goes by way of Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns, Archaeological Site of Mystras and back through Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns. The line favours views over speed.
Hosios Loukas stands on a shelf of Mount Helicon, in central Greece, in a landscape of olive terraces and grey limestone, overlooking a wide green valley. The monastery was founded in the tenth century around the tomb of a hermit, Saint Luke of Steiris, who lived nearby and died in 953, and who was said to have predicted the Byzantine reconquest of Crete. It is one of the three great Middle Byzantine monasteries, with Daphni near Athens and Nea Moni on Chios, that UNESCO recognises together. Few people outside Greece have heard of it, which is a shame.
Read the complete Monastery of Hosios Loukas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monastery of Hosios Loukas is where the day begins. Next is Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns.
The plain of Argos is a wide, flat basin of orange groves and olive trees tucked into the Peloponnese, and on its edge, a few kilometres apart, stand the two strongholds that gave the Greek Bronze Age its name. Mycenae sits on a rocky spur between two ravines, with Argos eleven kilometres to the south-west and the sea beyond, and Tiryns lies lower down near the shore, on a low rocky mound that once stood by the water.
Read the complete Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns comes up about 218 km into the recorded legs. Next is Archaeological Site of Mystras.
Mystras is a whole Byzantine city draped down a steep hillside, a few kilometres west of modern Sparta, at the foot of the Taygetos mountains. It began in 1249, when William II of Villehardouin, a Frankish prince ruling the Peloponnese after the Fourth Crusade, built a castle on the summit. Within a few years the Byzantines had taken it back, and Mystras grew into the capital of the Despotate of the Morea, a centre of learning and art in the last centuries of the empire. The philosopher Gemistos Plethon taught here, and in 1449 Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine emperor, was crowned here before leaving for Constantinople, where he died when the city fell in 1453.
Read the complete Archaeological Site of Mystras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 338 km into the recorded legs you reach Archaeological Site of Mystras. Next is back through Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns, late in the day. Next is Monastery of Hosios Loukas.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monastery of Hosios Loukas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Monastery of Hosios Loukas. That is the ride.
Monastery of Hosios Loukas → Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns is 218 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns → Archaeological Site of Mystras is 120 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Archaeological Site of Mystras → back through Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns is 121 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Archaeological Sites of Mycenae and Tiryns → Monastery of Hosios Loukas is 217 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.