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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 911 km round trip from Madīnat ‘Īsá - roughly 16 h 33 in the saddle. The stops in between: Al Zubarah Archaeological Site and back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site. It crosses from Bahrain into Qatar - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The man who put these mounds on the international map was a Dane with a shovel. In 1953 an expedition from Aarhus, led by Peter Glob and the young archaeologist Geoffrey Bibby, came to Bahrain to see whether the island's countless burial mounds hid anything of interest. Bibby later wrote a lively book about the work, Looking for Dilmun, and it is still the best introduction to the place, a story of heat, flies, tea and slowly dawning realisation that this dry island had been the centre of a lost trading civilisation.
Read the complete Royal Mound 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Royal Mound 2 is where the day begins. Next is Al Zubarah Archaeological Site.
Out on the north-west coast of Qatar, where the desert slides into a shallow turquoise sea, stand the low ruins of Al Zubarah, once one of the busiest pearling and trading towns in the Gulf. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the town thrived on pearls dived from the oyster beds offshore, traded on to India, Persia and beyond. Then it declined, was abandoned in the early twentieth century, and the sand covered it. Archaeologists have since uncovered streets, houses, a souk, mosques and a long town wall running in an arc around the old harbour. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2013.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site comes up about 456 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hayr Bū-l-Thāmah.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site, late in the day. Next is Royal Mound 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Royal Mound 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Royal Mound 2. That is the ride.
Royal Mound 2 → Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 456 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 0 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → Royal Mound 2 is 456 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.