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.
383 km from Tripoli to Tripoli, about 5 h 56 of riding. On the way it passes Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di, Ouadi Qadisha and back through Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,300 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Lebanon into Syria - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
In the early 1960s, the Lebanese government invited the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer to design an international fairground for Tripoli, the country's second city. He produced a vast, futuristic complex of sweeping concrete forms: a huge boomerang-shaped exhibition hall, a dome for experimental theatre, an open-air theatre, a helipad, a water tower and more, all set in a park on the edge of the city. Construction was almost finished when the civil war broke out in 1975, and the fair was never completed. Today the site stands as an extraordinary, melancholy monument to modernist ambition and lost hope, and it was listed by UNESCO in 2023, immediately placed on the list of heritage in danger.
Read the complete Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli is where the day begins. Next is Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di.
Crac des Chevaliers stands on a spur of the Jebel Ansariyya, overlooking the Homs Gap, the one low corridor between the Mediterranean coast and the Syrian interior, and that is why it was built here. In 1142 the Count of Tripoli gave the site to the Knights Hospitaller, who rebuilt it over the following century into the greatest castle of the Crusades, with two concentric rings of walls, a moat, a long, sloping ramp, and a great hall with Gothic vaults. At its peak it could hold a garrison of some two thousand men, with stables, storerooms and an enormous cistern.
Read the complete Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di comes up about 69 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ouadi Qadisha.
Two places are tangled in this label, and it helps to separate them. The Qadisha Valley, whose name means Holy Valley, is a deep gorge in northern Lebanon beneath the Cedars of God, where Maronite Christians settled in caves and built monasteries and hermitages from the early centuries. UNESCO inscribed it in 1998, and the cliffs there fall nearly straight into a river valley that ties together prayer, farming and defence.
Read the complete Ouadi Qadisha write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 185 km into the recorded legs you reach Ouadi Qadisha. Next is back through Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di, late in the day. Next is Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli. That is the ride.
Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli → Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di is 69 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di → Ouadi Qadisha is 116 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Ouadi Qadisha → back through Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di is 132 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Di → Rachid Karami International Fair-Tripoli is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.