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.
An 857 km round trip from Pythagóreio - roughly 42 h 48 in the saddle. The stops in between: Ephesus, Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe and back through Ephesus. It crosses from Greece into Türkiye - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Pythagóreio is a small fishing harbour on the south-east coast of Samos, a Greek island that lies so close to Turkey that the strait between them is barely two kilometres wide at its narrowest. The village sits on the site of the ancient capital, which in the sixth century BC was one of the richest cities of the Aegean under the tyrant Polycrates. He built a great mole to protect the harbour, a temple of Hera that was among the largest of the Greek world, and a water tunnel that astonished the ancient world. The island was also the birthplace of Pythagoras, the philosopher and mathematician, and a statue of him stands on the waterfront.
Read the complete Pythagoreion of Samos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pythagoreion of Samos is where the day begins. Next is Ephesus.
Ephesus once had a population of a quarter of a million, a harbour that brought in ships from across the Mediterranean, and a temple counted among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Today it has the best-preserved street plan of any Roman city in the east, and a crowd of visitors who walk down its marble roads each morning. The most photographed building is the Library of Celsus, whose two-storey facade, with its columns and statues of the virtues, was built in the early second century as a tomb and a library for a Roman governor, and rebuilt from the fallen stones in the twentieth century. The Great Theatre, carved into the slope of Mount Pion, held about twenty-five thousand people and is where, according to the Acts of the Apostles, the silversmiths of Ephesus rioted against Paul for threatening the trade in souvenir shrines of Artemis.
Read the complete Ephesus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ephesus comes up about 295 km into the recorded legs. Next is Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe.
Bin Tepe means a thousand mounds, and the name is only a mild exaggeration. On a low ridge north of the Gediz river plain, a few kilometres from the shore of Lake Marmara, the kings and nobles of ancient Lydia were buried under hundreds of earth tumuli, some of them enormous. Lydia, with its capital at Sardis, was the kingdom of Croesus, whose name became a byword for wealth, and the first state in the world to mint coins from electrum, the natural gold and silver alloy washed down from the mountains. The mounds date mostly from the seventh to the sixth centuries BC, and they were the funeral monuments of a rich, confident civilisation.
Read the complete Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 424 km into the recorded legs you reach Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe. Next is back through Ephesus.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ephesus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ephesus, late in the day. Next is Pythagoreion of Samos.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pythagoreion of Samos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Pythagoreion of Samos. That is the ride.
Pythagoreion of Samos → Ephesus is 295 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ephesus → Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe is 129 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe → back through Ephesus is 137 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Ephesus → Pythagoreion of Samos is 296 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.