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.
A 256 km round trip from Cuorgnè - roughly 5 h 14 in the saddle. The stops in between: Ivrea, Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine, Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal and back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,750 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
On a granite hill rising above the Canavese plain north of Turin, the Sacro Monte di Belmonte looks out over the foothills toward the Alps. The sanctuary, run by Franciscan friars, has a church and a circuit of chapels representing the stations of the Passion, built in the early eighteenth century on a site that had long been a place of pilgrimage. It is part of the UNESCO-listed Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, and the walk around the chapels, under chestnut and oak trees, is calm and shady even in summer.
Read the complete Sacro Monte di Belmonte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte di Belmonte is where the day begins. Next is Ivrea.
Ivrea is the town Olivetti built, or at least rebuilt. In the twentieth century the Olivetti company, famous for typewriters, calculators and some of the first personal computers, turned this small Piedmontese town into a showcase of what industry could be: factories with glass walls and natural light, worker housing, libraries, nurseries and social services designed by the best architects of the day. Adriano Olivetti believed a company should serve its community, and the result was listed by UNESCO in 2018 as an industrial city of the twentieth century. Walk along Corso Jervis and you can see the buildings still standing, some reused, some waiting.
Read the complete Ivrea write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ivrea comes up 33 km in. 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.
65 km in you reach Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine. Next is Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Varallo is a small town at the point where the Valsesia stops being a wide valley and starts becoming a mountain one, and above it, on a rocky spur reached by a winding road or a short cable car, is the oldest and most ambitious of the Sacri Monti. In 1491 a Franciscan friar called Bernardino Caimi, back from the Holy Land, set out to recreate Jerusalem here for pilgrims who could never make the journey. The result is a hilltop village of more than forty chapels filled with life-size painted terracotta and wooden figures, hundreds of them, telling the life of Christ like a frozen theatre. Gaudenzio Ferrari, the great Renaissance painter of this valley, worked on many of them.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal, about halfway. 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.
back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine sits at 130 km, about halfway. Next is back through Ivrea.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ivrea write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ivrea comes up 163 km in. Next is Sacro Monte di Belmonte.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte di Belmonte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte di Belmonte closes the day.
Sacro Monte di Belmonte → Ivrea is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ivrea → Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → back through Ivrea is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ivrea → Sacro Monte di Belmonte is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.