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 Vila Nova de Foz Côa it runs 414 km to Vila Nova de Foz Côa; allow about 7 h 37 of riding. The stops in between: Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall, Faia - Vale Afonsinho, Zone archéologique d’art rupestre de Siega and back through Faia - Vale Afonsinho. It crosses from Portugal into Spain - carry ID and check the toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Ribeira de Piscos is a small stream that runs into the Côa, and its banks hold some of the best rock art in the valley. The engravings are cut into smooth, vertical slabs of schist, and they show what the hunters here cared about: aurochs with long curving horns, wild horses, ibex and deer, drawn in fine lines that overlap in layers, as if each generation added to the work of the one before. Some are about twenty thousand years old, and some were made later, in the Iron Age. The panels can be seen only on a guided visit, usually by four-wheel-drive vehicle from the museum in Foz Côa, so booking ahead is sensible.
Read the complete Ribeira de Piscos / Quinta dos Poios write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ribeira de Piscos / Quinta dos Poios is where the day begins. Next is Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall.
On the Spanish side of the border with Portugal, the river Águeda cuts through granite and schist on its way to the Douro, and on the rock faces along its banks, at Siega Verde, Palaeolithic people engraved horses, aurochs, deer and goats more than ten thousand years ago. In 2010 Siega Verde was added to the Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Valley, the Portuguese World Heritage Site just across the border, recognising that these open-air engravings form one of the largest collections of Ice Age art in the world.
Read the complete Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall comes up about 84 km into the recorded legs. Next is Faia - Vale Afonsinho.
Thirty thousand years ago, give or take, people in this valley scratched horses, aurochs and ibex into the schist rocks along the River Côa, and their drawings would almost certainly have been drowned if a dam had been built here in the 1990s. Instead, after a fierce campaign, the dam was abandoned and the Côa Valley rock art became one of the most important open-air Palaeolithic art sites in the world, listed by UNESCO in 1998 together with Siega Verde across the border in Spain. Faia, in the side valley near Vale Afonsinho, is one of its core sites, with engravings and some rare painted figures on the rock faces above the river.
Read the complete Faia - Vale Afonsinho write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 145 km into the recorded legs you reach Faia - Vale Afonsinho. Next is Zone archéologique d’art rupestre de Siega.
Eighteen thousand years is a conservative guess for some of the engravings on the rocks at Siega Verde, and the animals they show are still recognisable: horses, aurochs, deer, ibex and the occasional bison, scratched with flint into the flat grey-brown schist slabs that line the river Agueda. There are hundreds of them, and the open-air gallery runs for about a kilometre along the water. They were made by hunter-gatherers of the Upper Palaeolithic, and they are all outdoors, unprotected by caves, which makes the survival of so much of it remarkable. The site was found only in 1988 by a pair of archaeologists, and it was added to the World Heritage list in 2010 as an extension of the Coa Valley in Portugal, which has a related collection less than a hundred kilometres away.
Read the complete Zone archéologique d’art rupestre de Siega write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zone archéologique d’art rupestre de Siega, about halfway. Next is back through Faia - Vale Afonsinho.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Faia - Vale Afonsinho write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Faia - Vale Afonsinho sits at 253 km, about halfway. Next is back through Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall comes up about 330 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ribeira de Piscos / Quinta dos Poios.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ribeira de Piscos / Quinta dos Poios write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ribeira de Piscos / Quinta dos Poios closes the day.
Ribeira de Piscos / Quinta dos Poios → Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall is 84 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall → Faia - Vale Afonsinho is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Faia - Vale Afonsinho → Zone archéologique d’art rupestre de Siega is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Zone archéologique d’art rupestre de Siega → back through Faia - Vale Afonsinho is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Faia - Vale Afonsinho → back through Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Vall → Ribeira de Piscos / Quinta dos Poios is 84 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.