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 442 km round trip from Pallanza-Intra-Suna - roughly 8 h 12 in the saddle. On the way it passes Mercurago, Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine, Castello di Agliè and Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,750 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
High above the western shore of Lake Maggiore, in a forest of chestnut and beech above the village of Ghiffa, a small sanctuary dedicated to the Holy Trinity looks out over the water to the hills of Lombardy. The Sacro Monte of Ghiffa began in the seventeenth century as a series of chapels along a path, each meant to illustrate a scene from sacred history for pilgrims, but it was never completed as planned. It is the smallest of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy listed by UNESCO in 2003, and its charm lies in its intimacy and its setting: a few chapels, a porticoed walkway and a church in the woods, with the lake shining below.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità 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 50 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 128 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine. Next is Castello di Agliè.
Agliè is a small town in the Canavese, the hilly district north of Turin that spreads between the Po plain and the mouths of the Alpine valleys, and its castle is far grander than the town around it. Begun as a medieval fortress by the San Martino counts, it was transformed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into a baroque residence and later bought by the House of Savoy, who turned it into a summer palace with richly decorated rooms, a chapel, a theatre and a large park with fountains and a lake. It is part of the UNESCO listing of the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy, a ring of palaces around Turin, and Italian television viewers may recognise it from a popular costume drama filmed there.
Read the complete Castello di Agliè write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Castello di Agliè, about halfway. Next is Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria.
The Parco La Mandria, north-west of Turin, is the largest remnant of the royal hunting estates of the House of Savoy, and the Borgo Castello at its centre was once the heart of the estate. The word mandria means a herd, and the park began as a stud and breeding farm for horses and cattle on the plain, with the woods kept for the hunt. Today the park is a protected area of about three thousand hectares, surrounded by a wall, where visitors walk or cycle between oaks, hornbeams and meadows, and where deer and wild boar still live.
Read the complete Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria sits at 180 km, about halfway. Next is back through Castello di Agliè.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Castello di Agliè write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Castello di Agliè comes up about 266 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 321 km into the recorded legs you reach back through 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 della SS.Trinità, 45 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 442 km.
Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità → Mercurago is 50 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 → Castello di Agliè is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Castello di Agliè → Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Borgo castello nel parco della Mandria → back through Castello di Agliè is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Castello di Agliè → back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through 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 della SS.Trinità is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.