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 Rila it runs 503 km to Rila; allow about 8 h 57 of riding. The stops in between: Pirin National Park, Boyana Church and back through Pirin National Park. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,450 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
The town of Rila is a small place at the foot of the mountains that bear its name, and the Orlitsa convent stands just a short way outside it, in the valley of the Rila river. It is a quiet complex, a working community of nuns, with a small church and gardens, and it gets a tiny fraction of the visitors that go to the great monastery further up the valley. For that reason alone it is worth a stop, since you can sit in the courtyard and hear the river instead of a crowd.
Read the complete Orlitsa Convent Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Orlitsa Convent Complex is where the day begins. Next is Pirin National Park.
Vihren, at 2,914 metres the highest peak of the Pirin mountains and the third highest in the Balkans, rises above the town of Bansko in south-western Bulgaria in a sharp, pale pyramid of marble. The Pirin National Park protects the high country around it, a landscape of granite and marble peaks, glacial cirques, more than a hundred lakes and ancient forests of pine and fir, and it was listed by UNESCO in 1983.
Read the complete Pirin National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pirin National Park comes up about 93 km into the recorded legs. Next is Boyana Church.
Boyana is a village on the southern edge of Sofia, tucked against the lower slopes of Mount Vitosha, and it holds a small church that changed the history of European painting, or at least its footnotes. The church is made of three parts built over several centuries, but the middle part, a tiny two-storey chapel, was decorated in 1259 for Sebastokrator Kaloyan, a local ruler, and his wife Desislava, who are painted in the narthex as donors. The frescoes show eighty-nine scenes with more than two hundred and forty human figures, and they are astonishing for their realism. The faces have individual expressions, the saints look like real people, and they predate the Italian Renaissance by generations.
Read the complete Boyana Church write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 252 km into the recorded legs you reach Boyana Church. Next is back through Pirin National Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pirin National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pirin National Park, late in the day. Next is Orlitsa Convent Complex.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Orlitsa Convent Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Orlitsa Convent Complex. That is the ride.
Orlitsa Convent Complex → Pirin National Park is 93 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Pirin National Park → Boyana Church is 159 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Boyana Church → back through Pirin National Park is 159 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Pirin National Park → Orlitsa Convent Complex is 92 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.