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.
A 318 km round trip from Retiro - roughly 4 h 58 in the saddle. The stops in between: University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá, Aranjuez Cultural Landscape, Historic City of Toledo and back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Riding into the centre of Madrid is not anyone's idea of a scenic route, but the Paseo del Prado makes up for the traffic. This broad, tree-lined boulevard, laid out in the eighteenth century under Charles III as a showpiece of the Enlightenment, runs from the Cibeles fountain past Neptune to the Atocha station, and along it stand three of the greatest art museums in the world: the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and, a short walk away, the Reina Sofía with Picasso's Guernica. Behind the Prado, the Buen Retiro park spreads over more than a hundred hectares of gardens, lakes and avenues, once the grounds of a royal palace. In 2021 UNESCO listed the ensemble as the Landscape of Light, a recognition of the boulevard and the park as a planned urban landscape devoted to science, art and leisure.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro is where the day begins. Next is University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá.
Alcalá de Henares has a talent for producing writers. Miguel de Cervantes was born here in 1547, and a house museum in the old town commemorates him. The university, founded by Cardinal Cisneros in 1499, was one of the earliest planned university towns in Europe and a model for institutions in the Americas, and its Renaissance and Baroque buildings, with their stone façades and courtyards, are the core of the UNESCO listing that Alcalá received in 1998 for its university and historic precinct. The Paraninfo, the ceremonial hall, is where the Cervantes Prize is presented each year.
Read the complete University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is Aranjuez Cultural Landscape.
Aranjuez is the green oasis of the dry Madrid plain, a royal town built where the Tagus and the Jarama rivers meet and where Spanish kings came every spring to escape the court. The palace, largely an eighteenth-century Bourbon creation, faces broad avenues and formal gardens, and the riverside parks of the Jardín de la Isla and the Jardín del Príncipe stretch for kilometres along the water, with fountains, statues, an artificial island and tall old trees. In 2001 UNESCO listed the whole thing as a cultural landscape, recognising how the kings shaped nature, agriculture and town planning into a single designed whole.
Read the complete Aranjuez Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 108 km into the recorded legs you reach Aranjuez Cultural Landscape. Next is Historic City of Toledo.
Toledo sits inside a tight loop of the Tagus, with a gorge on three sides and a fortified hill in the middle, and its position is the reason for much of its history. It was the capital of the Visigothic kingdom, a Muslim city for centuries, and then the seat of the Spanish crown until Philip II moved the court to Madrid in 1561. Christians, Muslims and Jews lived side by side here in the Middle Ages, and the old centre still holds a synagogue, a small mosque and a great Gothic cathedral within a few minutes' walk of each other. UNESCO listed the whole city in 1986. The painter El Greco made it his home, and his huge picture of the burial of the Count of Orgaz hangs in a small church near the old Jewish quarter.
Read the complete Historic City of Toledo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic City of Toledo, about halfway. Next is back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Aranjuez Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape sits at 220 km, about halfway. Next is back through University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá comes up about 287 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro closes the day.
Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro → University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá → Aranjuez Cultural Landscape is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Aranjuez Cultural Landscape → Historic City of Toledo is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historic City of Toledo → back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Aranjuez Cultural Landscape → back through University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá is 78 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá → Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.