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 Sidmouth it runs 230 km to Sidmouth; allow about 4 h 37 of riding. On the way it passes Dorset and East Devon Coast, Chesil, Bowleaze Cove to Peveril Point and back through Chesil. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 28 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Where the Otter meets the sea near Budleigh Salterton, the cliffs turn red. This is the start of the Jurassic Coast, the stretch of Dorset and East Devon coast that UNESCO listed in 2001 because the cliffs tell a continuous story of 185 million years. At the eastern end, at Orcombe Point in Exmouth, a stone sculpture called the Geoneedle marks the beginning, and from there the rocks run from the red sandstones of the Triassic towards the white chalk of the east. The section between Orcombe Rocks and Chit Rocks is the oldest, a wall of red cliff, sandy beach and sea stacks that look as if they were painted.
Read the complete Orcombe Rocks to Chit Rocks write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Orcombe Rocks to Chit Rocks is where the day begins. Next is Dorset and East Devon Coast.
The cliffs around Lyme Regis are made of dark, crumbling clay and shale, and every winter storm brings some of them down. That is why fossil hunters love them. In the early nineteenth century a local girl named Mary Anning, the daughter of a carpenter, found the skeleton of an ichthyosaur on the beach and went on to unearth some of the first plesiosaurs, earning a grudging place in a scientific world that did not welcome women. The ammonites, fossil crinoids and sea-reptile bones that still turn up here are nearly two hundred million years old, and the whole coast from Exmouth to Studland, the Jurassic Coast, was listed by UNESCO in 2001 for its record of Earth history.
Read the complete Dorset and East Devon Coast write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dorset and East Devon Coast comes up about 30 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chesil.
Twenty-nine kilometres of shingle, piled high and steep and running almost dead straight from West Bay to the Isle of Portland: Chesil Beach is one of the great natural oddities of the English coast. Behind it lies the Fleet, a long, shallow, brackish lagoon full of eelgrass and birds, and the whole system is part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. The pebbles grade in size along the beach, small as peas at the western end and as big as potatoes towards Portland, so precisely that smugglers landing on dark nights were said to know where they were by the feel of the stones.
Read the complete Chesil write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 74 km into the recorded legs you reach Chesil. Next is Bowleaze Cove to Peveril Point.
This is where the geology lesson becomes a spectacle: Lulworth Cove, an almost perfect circle bitten out of soft clays behind a narrow gap in the harder limestone, and Durdle Door just to the west, an arch of Portland stone standing in clear green water. The Lulworth Crumple, where the rock layers have been bent nearly vertical by the same forces that raised the Alps, is visible at Stair Hole.
Read the complete Bowleaze Cove to Peveril Point write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bowleaze Cove to Peveril Point, about halfway. Next is back through Chesil.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chesil write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chesil sits at 145 km, about halfway. Next is back through Dorset and East Devon Coast.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Dorset and East Devon Coast write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Dorset and East Devon Coast comes up about 201 km into the recorded legs. Next is Orcombe Rocks to Chit Rocks.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Orcombe Rocks to Chit Rocks write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Orcombe Rocks to Chit Rocks closes the day.
Orcombe Rocks to Chit Rocks → Dorset and East Devon Coast is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dorset and East Devon Coast → Chesil is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chesil → Bowleaze Cove to Peveril Point is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bowleaze Cove to Peveril Point → back through Chesil is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chesil → back through Dorset and East Devon Coast is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Dorset and East Devon Coast → Orcombe Rocks to Chit Rocks is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.