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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
967 km from Al Muharraq to Al Muharraq, about 16 h 41 of riding. It goes by way of Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field, Al Zubarah Archaeological Site and back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field. It crosses from Bahrain into Qatar - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
The Murad family were pearl merchants, and their house in Muharraq belongs to the generation that saw the trade at its peak and then watched it collapse. The business boomed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as demand for natural pearls rose in Europe and India, and the merchants of the Gulf grew rich. Then, in the 1930s, the Japanese perfected the cultured pearl, prices fell, and the industry went into a decline from which it never recovered. In Bahrain the crash was cushioned by oil, struck in 1932, the first oil strike on the Arab side of the Gulf.
Read the complete Murad House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Murad House is where the day begins. Next is Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field.
Flat, pale and apparently empty, the central plain of Bahrain hides one of the oldest cemeteries on earth. Some four thousand years ago the island of Dilmun, as it was known to the Sumerians, buried its dead under thousands upon thousands of low stone mounds, and in places like Madinat Hamad and A'ali the mounds still stand in dense, grey fields. At one time there may have been several hundred thousand of them, which would have made Dilmun a famous necropolis in its day, and many have since been flattened by roads, housing and quarrying.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field comes up about 121 km into the recorded legs. Next is Al Zubarah Archaeological Site.
Out on the north-west coast of Qatar, where the desert slides into a shallow turquoise sea, stand the low ruins of Al Zubarah, once one of the busiest pearling and trading towns in the Gulf. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the town thrived on pearls dived from the oyster beds offshore, traded on to India, Persia and beyond. Then it declined, was abandoned in the early twentieth century, and the sand covered it. Archaeologists have since uncovered streets, houses, a souk, mosques and a long town wall running in an arc around the old harbour. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2013.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 486 km into the recorded legs you reach Al Zubarah Archaeological Site. Next is back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field, late in the day. Next is Murad House.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Murad House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Murad House. That is the ride.
Murad House → Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field is 121 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field → Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 364 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field is 364 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field → Murad House is 121 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.