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.
A 279 km round trip from Bellprat - roughly 4 h 42 in the saddle. The stops in between: Abric de Can Ximet, Crypt at the Colònia Güell, La Pedra de les Orenetes and back through Crypt at the Colònia Güell. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 47 km this is Monserrat Mountain Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Roca Roja, the red rock, is a fitting name for this corner of inland Catalonia, where sandstone and conglomerate cliffs glow rust-coloured in the evening light above pine forest and small terraced fields. The point lies in the hills between Querol and Mediona, where the comarques of Alt Camp, Alt Penedès and Anoia meet, a rugged, thinly populated upland that most people speed past on the motorway between Barcelona and Lleida without realising it exists.
Read the complete Roca Roja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Roca Roja is where the day begins. Next is Abric de Can Ximet.
The Penedès is a broad, gently rolling basin between the coastal ranges and the Montserrat massif, and it is one of the great wine regions of Catalonia. Vilafranca del Penedès, its capital, is a lively town with a Gothic church, a wine museum and a passion for castells, the human towers that teams of men, women and children build in the main square on feast days. UNESCO added the castells to its list of intangible heritage in 2010. Can Ximet is a farm name on the fringe of this landscape, and the shelter nearby is a modest rock overhang associated with prehistoric art.
Read the complete Abric de Can Ximet write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Abric de Can Ximet comes up about 42 km into the recorded legs. Next is Crypt at the Colònia Güell.
Few people ride out of Barcelona expecting to find Gaudí in a mill village, but that is exactly what waits at Santa Coloma de Cervelló, a short hop up the Llobregat from Sant Boi. The Colònia Güell was a textile colony founded by the industrialist Eusebi Güell, who moved his cotton works out of the city in the 1890s and built housing, a school, shops and a theatre for the workers around the factory. He asked his friend Antoni Gaudí for a church. Gaudí spent about ten years on the design and its foundations, and when money and the Güell family's enthusiasm ran out around 1914, only the lower level had been finished. That crypt is what you come to see.
Read the complete Crypt at the Colònia Güell write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 92 km into the recorded legs you reach Crypt at the Colònia Güell. Next is La Pedra de les Orenetes.
La Pedra de les Orenetes, the Swallows' Stone, is a granite boulder in the hills above La Roca del Vallès, and its surface is covered with small carved hollows and other marks left by people in prehistory. Nobody knows exactly what they meant; such engraved rocks are found across Catalonia, and theories range from ritual offerings to maps of the stars. The rock sits among cork oaks and pines in the Serralada Litoral, the coastal range that separates the Vallès plain from the sea, and the walk to reach it is short and pleasant, through scented forest with views over the plain.
Read the complete La Pedra de les Orenetes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La Pedra de les Orenetes, about halfway. Next is back through Crypt at the Colònia Güell.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Crypt at the Colònia Güell write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Crypt at the Colònia Güell sits at 156 km, about halfway. Next is back through Abric de Can Ximet.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abric de Can Ximet write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Abric de Can Ximet comes up about 236 km into the recorded legs. Next is Roca Roja.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Roca Roja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Roca Roja closes the day.
Roca Roja → Abric de Can Ximet is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Abric de Can Ximet → Crypt at the Colònia Güell is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Crypt at the Colònia Güell → La Pedra de les Orenetes is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Pedra de les Orenetes → back through Crypt at the Colònia Güell is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Crypt at the Colònia Güell → back through Abric de Can Ximet is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Abric de Can Ximet → Roca Roja is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.