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 Rila it runs 491 km to Rila; allow about 7 h 57 of riding. The stops in between: Boyana Church, Central Balkan - Boatin Reserve and back through Boyana Church. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The road to Rila Monastery climbs a long valley through forests of beech and spruce, and when the monastery appears the effect is theatrical. Its walls enclose a courtyard of striped arcades in black, white and red, with a church in the middle covered in frescoes, and behind it the green flanks of the Rila mountains rise towards peaks of more than two and a half thousand metres. It is the largest and most important monastery in Bulgaria, and UNESCO listed it in 1983.
Read the complete Rila Monastery write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rila Monastery is where the day begins. Next is Boyana Church.
Boyana is a village on the southern edge of Sofia, tucked against the lower slopes of Mount Vitosha, and it holds a small church that changed the history of European painting, or at least its footnotes. The church is made of three parts built over several centuries, but the middle part, a tiny two-storey chapel, was decorated in 1259 for Sebastokrator Kaloyan, a local ruler, and his wife Desislava, who are painted in the narthex as donors. The frescoes show eighty-nine scenes with more than two hundred and forty human figures, and they are astonishing for their realism. The faces have individual expressions, the saints look like real people, and they predate the Italian Renaissance by generations.
Read the complete Boyana Church write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Boyana Church comes up about 115 km into the recorded legs. Next is Central Balkan - Boatin Reserve.
The Balkan range, the Stara Planina, runs across the middle of Bulgaria from the Serbian border to the Black Sea, and its central section is the wildest, highest and most heavily forested part. The Central Balkan National Park protects this area, and within it, the Boatin Reserve guards a stretch of ancient beech forest on the northern slopes, one of the components of the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe, a UNESCO site that stretches across many countries.
Read the complete Central Balkan - Boatin Reserve write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 245 km into the recorded legs you reach Central Balkan - Boatin Reserve. Next is back through Boyana Church.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Boyana Church write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Boyana Church, late in the day. Next is Rila Monastery.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rila Monastery write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Rila Monastery. That is the ride.
Rila Monastery → Boyana Church is 115 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Boyana Church → Central Balkan - Boatin Reserve is 130 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Central Balkan - Boatin Reserve → back through Boyana Church is 130 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Boyana Church → Rila Monastery is 115 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.