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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
881 km from Pythagóreio to Pythagóreio, about 15 h 12 of riding. The stops in between: House of Virgin Mary, Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe and back through House of Virgin Mary. It crosses from Greece into Türkiye - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 House of Virgin Mary.
High above Ephesus, on Bülbül Dağı, the Nightingale Mountain, there is a small stone house in a pine wood that Christian tradition, and a certain amount of nineteenth-century detective work, links with the last years of Mary. The story goes that John the Apostle brought her to Ephesus after the crucifixion. In the 1800s a German nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich, described the house in visions, and a French priest set out to find it and identified the ruins. The Catholic church has never officially declared it authentic, though several popes have visited, and both Christians and Muslims, who honour Mary as Meryem Ana, come to pray here. A wall outside is covered with folded notes and strips of cloth bearing wishes.
Read the complete House of Virgin Mary write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
House of Virgin Mary comes up about 137 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 442 km into the recorded legs you reach Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe. Next is back through House of Virgin Mary.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete House of Virgin Mary write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through House of Virgin Mary, 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 → House of Virgin Mary is 137 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
House of Virgin Mary → Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe is 305 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe → back through House of Virgin Mary is 305 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through House of Virgin Mary → Pythagoreion of Samos is 137 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.