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.
A 221 km round trip from Bent Jbaïl - roughly 3 h 49 in the saddle. On the way it passes Qalaat al-Chakif, Tyre, Junayn Garden and back through Tyre. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Lebanon into Israel - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Tibnin is a castle on a hill in south Lebanon, and the story it tells is one of rival crowns trading the same piece of ground. The Crusaders built it in the early twelfth century, around 1105, under Hugh of St Omer, and called it Toron. It sat between the coast at Tyre and the road to Damascus, and from its walls a garrison could see raiders coming a long way off. Saladin took it in 1187, and the fortress changed hands and shape for centuries afterwards, ending up a half-ruined hill crowned with pale stone, with a village of the same name spread around it.
Read the complete Qalaat Tibnin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Qalaat Tibnin is where the day begins. Next is Qalaat al-Chakif.
Perched on a cliff edge some three hundred metres above the gorge of the Litani river in southern Lebanon, Beaufort Castle, known in Arabic as Qalaat al-Chakif, has watched over the borderlands of the Levant for nearly a thousand years. The Crusaders took and fortified it in the twelfth century, and it was finally surrendered to Saladin in 1190 after a long siege. Later it was held by the Mamluks, rebuilt and repaired by local rulers, and in the twentieth century it became a fiercely contested military position, occupied by Palestinian fighters and then by the Israeli army from 1982 until its withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. Its stones have been battered by everything from siege engines to modern artillery.
Read the complete Qalaat al-Chakif write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Qalaat al-Chakif comes up about 25 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tyre.
Tyre was already ancient when Alexander the Great arrived in 332 before Christ. Then it was an island city just off the coast of what is now southern Lebanon, famously rich and famously stubborn, and when its citizens refused to open their gates, Alexander built a causeway out to the island and besieged it for months. Sand piled up against that causeway over the centuries, and the island became the peninsula you see today, with the modern city of Tyre spreading across it and the old harbour still busy with fishing boats.
Read the complete Tyre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 68 km into the recorded legs you reach Tyre. Next is Junayn Garden.
On the coastal plain of western Galilee, between Nahariya and Akko, a small garden known as Junayn is one of the Bahá'í holy places in Israel. Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, spent his final years in exile in this region in the late nineteenth century, after being banished by the Ottoman authorities from Persia and then from Baghdad, Istanbul and Edirne. Once his confinement in the prison-city of Akko was relaxed, he would visit gardens around the town, and this was one of them. The Bahá'í holy places in Haifa and western Galilee, including the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh at Bahjí and the terraced gardens on Mount Carmel, were listed by UNESCO in 2008. The gardens are tended with remarkable precision by Bahá'í volunteers from around the world, and the atmosphere is serene.
Read the complete Junayn Garden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Junayn Garden, about halfway. Next is back through Tyre.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tyre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tyre sits at 147 km, about halfway. Next is back through Qalaat al-Chakif.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Qalaat al-Chakif write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Qalaat al-Chakif comes up about 197 km into the recorded legs. Next is Qalaat Tibnin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Qalaat Tibnin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Qalaat Tibnin closes the day.
Qalaat Tibnin → Qalaat al-Chakif is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Qalaat al-Chakif → Tyre is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tyre → Junayn Garden is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Junayn Garden → back through Tyre is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tyre → back through Qalaat al-Chakif is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Qalaat al-Chakif → Qalaat Tibnin is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.