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.
334 km from Riomaggiore to Riomaggiore, about 5 h 16 of riding. It goes by way of Palais de Seravezza, Piazza del Duomo, Montecatini Terme and back through Piazza del Duomo. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 69 km this is Liguria Coastal Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Portovenere is a pastel row of tall houses stacked along the water's edge, their backs forming a kind of sea wall, and at the end of the promontory a black-and-white striped church on a rock. The church of San Pietro, begun in the twelfth century in the Genoese Gothic style, stands on the foundations of an older sanctuary that was supposedly a temple of Venus, the goddess who gave the town its name, and the whole point of the place leans out into the Ligurian Sea. Across a narrow strait lie the islands of Palmaria, Tino and Tinetto, part of the same World Heritage listing that covers the Cinque Terre. Byron is said to have swum across the bay to visit Shelley at Lerici, and a cave below the church carries his name.
Read the complete Portovenere write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Portovenere is where the day begins. Next is Palais de Seravezza.
Seravezza is where the Apuan Alps meet the Versilia coast in northern Tuscany. Behind the beaches of Forte dei Marmi, the mountains rise abruptly, white with marble scars, and Seravezza sits at the mouth of a valley where two rivers join. The Palazzo Mediceo, built in the 1560s for Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, was a summer residence and a base for overseeing the region's marble quarries and silver mines. It is one of the Medici villas and gardens inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2013, and today it hosts museums and exhibitions.
Read the complete Palais de Seravezza write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Palais de Seravezza comes up about 69 km into the recorded legs. Next is Piazza del Duomo.
Nothing prepares you for that first glimpse through the gateway. A wide green lawn, and set on it like ornaments on a cloth, the white marble cathedral, the round baptistery, the cemetery cloister of the Camposanto, and of course the bell tower, leaning at an angle that looks wrong no matter how many photographs you have seen. The Piazza del Duomo in Pisa, also called the Field of Miracles, was one of the first places in Italy to be listed by UNESCO, back in 1987.
Read the complete Piazza del Duomo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 112 km into the recorded legs you reach Piazza del Duomo. Next is Montecatini Terme.
The water at Montecatini has been drunk for health since the Middle Ages, but it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the town became one of the great spa resorts of Europe, with grand thermal establishments built in neoclassical, Liberty and Art Deco styles, set in parks of plane trees and pines. The Tettuccio, with its marble colonnades and frescoes, is the most famous, a temple of water where visitors drink from taps along a counter. In 2021 Montecatini became part of the Great Spa Towns of Europe World Heritage Site, alongside Baden-Baden, Bath, Vichy and others.
Read the complete Montecatini Terme write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Montecatini Terme, about halfway. Next is back through Piazza del Duomo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Piazza del Duomo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Piazza del Duomo sits at 199 km, about halfway. Next is back through Palais de Seravezza.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Palais de Seravezza write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Palais de Seravezza comes up about 263 km into the recorded legs. Next is Portovenere.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Portovenere write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Portovenere closes the day.
Portovenere → Palais de Seravezza is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Palais de Seravezza → Piazza del Duomo is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Piazza del Duomo → Montecatini Terme is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Montecatini Terme → back through Piazza del Duomo is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Piazza del Duomo → back through Palais de Seravezza is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Palais de Seravezza → Portovenere is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.