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 Paphos it runs 493 km to Paphos; allow about 10 h 35 of riding. The stops in between: Church of Archangelos Michael, Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village, Church of Panayia and Church of Ayia Sotira. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
The ride that brings you here starts in Paphos but belongs, for a while, to Aphrodite. Kouklia, a village on the southwest coast of Cyprus, sits on the site of Palaepaphos, the old Paphos, where the goddess of love was worshipped for well over a thousand years before the Romans arrived. Ancient writers placed her birth in the sea off this coast, and a rock offshore near here is still called Aphrodite's Rock. The sanctuary was a pilgrimage centre across the Mediterranean, and pilgrims travelled from Greece, Egypt and Phoenicia to reach it.
Read the complete Paphos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paphos is where the day begins. Next is Church of Archangelos Michael.
From the outside, the church of the Archangel Michael at Pedoulas looks like a barn, with a steep wooden roof covered in flat tiles coming almost to the ground. Inside, its walls are covered with frescoes painted in 1474 by a local artist named Minas, with bright colours and lively scenes from the life of Christ and the saints, and the archangel himself presiding over the door. It is one of the painted churches in the Troodos region listed by UNESCO, a group of small Byzantine churches and monasteries whose humble exteriors hide some of the richest interiors in the Eastern Christian world.
Read the complete Church of Archangelos Michael write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church of Archangelos Michael comes up about 76 km into the recorded legs. Next is Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village.
According to the Greeks, Aphrodite rose from the sea foam off the coast of Cyprus, and the place where she came ashore was near Paphos. The rock of Petra tou Romiou, a sea stack a few kilometres east of Kouklia, is the traditional spot, and the sanctuary on the hill above, at Palaepaphos, was one of the most important shrines of the ancient world. People came on pilgrimage from across the Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to late antiquity, and the cult went back to a Near Eastern fertility goddess long before the Greeks arrived, with the goddess worshipped in the form of a cone-shaped black stone.
Read the complete Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 135 km into the recorded legs you reach Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village. Next is Church of Panayia.
The Troodos mountains rise in the middle of Cyprus, covered in black pine, oak and cedar, with the summit of Mount Olympus at 1,952 metres, which gets snow in winter and has a small ski area. Hidden in the villages of the range are ten small churches that UNESCO listed in 2001, because their walls hold one of the finest collections of Byzantine and post-Byzantine wall paintings in the world, dating from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries. The label does not say which church this is, and there are several dedicated to Panayia, the Virgin, so I will describe the group, which is what makes any one of them special.
Read the complete Church of Panayia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church of Panayia, about halfway. Next is Church of Ayia Sotira.
This point lies in the northern foothills of the Troodos range, in a landscape of dry stone terraces, carob and olive trees, and villages that tilt down towards the Nicosia plain. What I can say is that the villages around it, Peléndri and Kyperoúnta among them, belong to one of the richest church regions in the eastern Mediterranean. The Troodos painted churches, ten of them on the UNESCO list, are small, steep-roofed stone buildings that hide Byzantine frescoes inside, and one of them, the Timios Stavros, stands at Peléndri.
Read the complete Church of Ayia Sotira write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church of Ayia Sotira sits at 198 km, about halfway. Next is back through Church of Panayia.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Church of Panayia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Church of Panayia comes up about 300 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 358 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village. Next is back through Church of Archangelos Michael.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Church of Archangelos Michael write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Church of Archangelos Michael, late in the day. Next is Paphos.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paphos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 493 km.
Paphos → Church of Archangelos Michael is 76 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Church of Archangelos Michael → Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village → Church of Panayia is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Church of Panayia → Church of Ayia Sotira is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Church of Ayia Sotira → back through Church of Panayia is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Church of Panayia → back through Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Aphrodite's Sanctuary at Kouklia village → back through Church of Archangelos Michael is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Church of Archangelos Michael → Paphos is 76 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.