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 Antwerpen it runs 215 km to Antwerpen; allow about 3 h 16 of riding. The stops in between: Flemish Béguinages, Hôtel van Eetvelde, Beffroi de Gembloux and back through Hôtel van Eetvelde. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Antwerp's cathedral tower is visible from almost anywhere in the city, and for good reason. The spire of the Cathedral of Our Lady rises about 123 metres above the old town, a slender, lacy Gothic needle that Napoleon is said to have compared with Mechelen lace. Work began in the middle of the fourteenth century and dragged on until the early sixteenth, by which time the city was the richest port in Northern Europe. The builders planned two towers but only finished one, and the unfinished stump of the second gives the facade its lopsided look.
Read the complete Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal is where the day begins. Next is Flemish Béguinages.
In the thirteenth century, a remarkable movement spread across the Low Countries. Women, often unmarried or widowed, chose to live together in communities devoted to prayer and work, without taking the permanent vows of nuns, keeping their property and the freedom to leave. They were called béguines, and their walled settlements, the béguinages, became towns within towns. The Groot Begijnhof of Mechelen, the great béguinage, is one of thirteen in Flanders listed by UNESCO, and at its height it housed well over a thousand women, making it one of the largest communities of its kind.
Read the complete Flemish Béguinages write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Flemish Béguinages comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hôtel van Eetvelde.
Victor Horta built this house between 1895 and 1898 for Edmond van Eetvelde, a senior official who ran the affairs of King Leopold II's Congo Free State from Brussels, and it is impossible now to look at it without holding both of those facts at once: one of the most daring houses of the Art Nouveau age, paid for in a world shaped by the brutal exploitation of the Congo. Hôtel van Eetvelde stands on the Avenue Palmerston near the Square Ambiorix, in the European quarter, and with three other Horta houses it was inscribed in 2000 as the Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta.
Read the complete Hôtel van Eetvelde write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 57 km into the recorded legs you reach Hôtel van Eetvelde. Next is Beffroi de Gembloux.
Gembloux grew up around a Benedictine abbey founded in the tenth century, and for most of its history the monks ran the show. The abbey buildings, rebuilt in a grand classical style in the eighteenth century, now house a university faculty of agricultural sciences, fitting for a town surrounded by some of the richest farmland in Belgium. The belfry, a solid tower that was once part of a church and later became the town's civic symbol, stands in the centre and is part of the UNESCO listing of belfries of Belgium and France. Climbing it gives views over the rooftops and across the open fields of the Hesbaye.
Read the complete Beffroi de Gembloux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Gembloux, about halfway. Next is back through Hôtel van Eetvelde.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hôtel van Eetvelde write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hôtel van Eetvelde sits at 147 km, about halfway. Next is back through Flemish Béguinages.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Flemish Béguinages write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Flemish Béguinages comes up about 189 km into the recorded legs. Next is Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal closes the day.
Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal → Flemish Béguinages is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Flemish Béguinages → Hôtel van Eetvelde is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hôtel van Eetvelde → Beffroi de Gembloux is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Gembloux → back through Hôtel van Eetvelde is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hôtel van Eetvelde → back through Flemish Béguinages is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Flemish Béguinages → Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.