CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
215 km from Tarragona to Tarragona, about 3 h 23 of riding. On the way it passes Triumphal Arch of Berá, Abric de Can Castellvi, Crypt at the Colònia Güell and back through Abric de Can Castellvi. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The Romans did not take long to decide that Tarragona was worth fortifying. Scipio's army landed here in 218 BC during the war against Carthage, and in time the settlement of Tarraco became the capital of the Roman province of Hispania Citerior and later of Tarraconensis, and one of the largest cities in Roman Spain. Its walls started as a Republican fortification, with huge irregular blocks at the base, the so-called cyclopean masonry, which were later heightened and rebuilt in Roman and later periods. A good stretch survives in the Passeig Arqueològic, where you can walk along the top.
Read the complete Roman walls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Roman walls is where the day begins. Next is Triumphal Arch of Berá.
For centuries traffic on the main coastal road of Catalonia drove straight through a Roman triumphal arch. The Arc de Berà stands on the line of the Via Augusta, the great Roman road from the Pyrenees to Cádiz, about twenty kilometres northeast of Tarragona, and until the road was diverted around it in the late twentieth century, cars and trucks passed under its single span. It was built at the end of the first century BC, and an inscription records that it was erected according to the will of Lucius Licinius Sura, a figure whose identity historians still discuss. It is part of the UNESCO listing for the Roman remains of Tarraco.
Read the complete Triumphal Arch of Berá write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Triumphal Arch of Berá comes up 32 km in. Next is Abric de Can Castellvi.
The Penedès is wine country, and the landscape around Vilafranca del Penedès is a patchwork of vineyards rolling away toward the Montserrat massif in the north and the limestone hills of the Garraf in the south. Abric de Can Castellví is a small rock shelter in this landscape, one of the many sites of Levantine and schematic rock art scattered across Catalonia and included in the UNESCO serial site of the rock art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula. Like many such sites, it is modest in appearance, a hollow in the rock where faint painted figures have survived thousands of years, and access is often limited to protect the art.
Read the complete Abric de Can Castellvi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
64 km in you reach Abric de Can Castellvi. 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.
Crypt at the Colònia Güell, about halfway. Next is back through Abric de Can Castellvi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abric de Can Castellvi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Abric de Can Castellvi sits at 128 km, about halfway. Next is back through Triumphal Arch of Berá.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Triumphal Arch of Berá write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Triumphal Arch of Berá comes up 160 km in. Next is Roman walls.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Roman walls write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Roman walls closes the day.
Roman walls → Triumphal Arch of Berá is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Triumphal Arch of Berá → Abric de Can Castellvi is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Abric de Can Castellví → Crypt at the Colònia Güell is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Crypt at the Colònia Güell → back through Abric de Can Castellvi is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Abric de Can Castellvi → back through Triumphal Arch of Berá is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Triumphal Arch of Berá → Roman walls is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.