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.
From Bent Jbaïl it runs 173 km to Bent Jbaïl; allow about 2 h 59 of riding. It goes by way of Qalaat al-Chakif, Tyre and back through Qalaat al-Chakif. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. 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 40 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 87 km into the recorded legs you reach Tyre. 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, late in the day. 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.
Back at Qalaat Tibnin. That is the ride.
Qalaat Tibnin → Qalaat al-Chakif is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Qalaat al-Chakif → Tyre is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tyre → back through Qalaat al-Chakif is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Qalaat al-Chakif → Qalaat Tibnin is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.