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 Domodossola it runs 285 km to Domodossola; allow about 4 h 39 of riding. It goes by way of Mercurago, Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine and back through Mercurago. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Domodossola's holy mountain rises immediately above the town, on the wooded Mattarella hill, and the walk or ride up gives you the whole Ossola valley at your feet. The Sacro Monte Calvario was begun in the seventeenth century as a devotional path of chapels depicting the Passion of Christ, each holding painted and sculpted scenes, leading up to a sanctuary church at the top. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy inscribed together on the UNESCO list, and it has a particular link with Antonio Rosmini, the philosopher-priest who founded his religious institute here in the nineteenth century.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte Calvario is where the day begins. Next is Mercurago.
Just south of Arona, at the southern tip of Lago Maggiore, a small regional park protects a landscape of woods, meadows and peat bogs called the Lagoni di Mercurago. The lagoni are small ponds and wetlands formed after the retreat of the glaciers, and in the nineteenth century, while peat was being dug, the remains of a Bronze Age pile dwelling settlement were found here, including a wooden wheel. Mercurago is part of the UNESCO site of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps.
Read the complete Mercurago write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mercurago comes up about 68 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine.
Oropa is a sanctuary on a scale that surprises everyone who comes up the valley from Biella for the first time. At almost twelve hundred metres, in a bowl of mountains, a vast complex of churches, courtyards, porticoes and pilgrim lodgings rises in terraces, built over several centuries around an ancient chapel that holds a Black Madonna, a wooden statue of the Virgin that legend attributes to St Luke. Above the main buildings, a Sacro Monte of chapels with life-size statues illustrates the life of Mary along a wooded path. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy listed by UNESCO in 2003, and one of the most important Marian shrines in the Alps.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 146 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine. Next is back through Mercurago.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mercurago write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mercurago, late in the day. Next is Sacro Monte Calvario.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Sacro Monte Calvario. That is the ride.
Sacro Monte Calvario → Mercurago is 68 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mercurago → Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 78 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → back through Mercurago is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mercurago → Sacro Monte Calvario is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.