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 325 km round trip from Az Zuwāydah - roughly 4 h 49 in the saddle. The stops in between: Haluza, Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud and back through Haluza. It crosses from Palestinian Territories into Israel - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Saint Hilarion was born around 291 in a village near Gaza and grew up to be the founder of monasticism in Palestine. He studied in Alexandria, was inspired by the desert hermit Anthony, and returned home to live a life of such strict simplicity that disciples followed him and settled around him. The monastery that grew up here, at the site known today as Tell Umm Amer, became one of the largest in the Middle East, with churches, a bathhouse, hostels and workshops, and it functioned for several centuries until the seventh century. Hilarion himself eventually left, wandered through Egypt, Sicily and Dalmatia and died in Cyprus around 371, but the monastery kept his name.
Read the complete Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer is where the day begins. Next is Haluza.
Halutza is a ghost of a city in the sand. Founded by the Nabataeans as a waystation on the incense route from Arabia to the Mediterranean, it grew in the Roman and Byzantine periods into the most important city of the Negev, known in Greek as Elusa, with a theatre, churches and a famous school of rhetoric. Then it faded, the sand moved in, and today only fragments of walls, a small theatre and the remains of churches poke out of the dunes south-west of Beersheba. It is part of the UNESCO-listed Incense Route and desert cities of the Negev, along with Avdat, Mamshit and Shivta.
Read the complete Haluza write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Haluza comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud.
Beneath the low hills of the Judean lowlands, the Shephelah, lies a city of caves. Maresha was an important town of the Iron Age and the Hellenistic period, and its inhabitants carved thousands of chambers into the soft chalk beneath their houses: cisterns, olive presses, stables, quarries, burial caves and columbaria, rooms with hundreds of niches, probably used for raising pigeons. Nearby Bet Guvrin, known to the Romans as Eleutheropolis, became a major city in later centuries. The national park and its caves were listed by UNESCO in 2014 as a microcosm of the land of the caves.
Read the complete Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 161 km into the recorded legs you reach Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud. Next is back through Haluza.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Haluza write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Haluza, late in the day. Next is Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer. That is the ride.
Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer → Haluza is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Haluza → Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud is 99 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Caves of Maresha and Bet-Guvrin in the Jud → back through Haluza is 102 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Haluza → Saint Hilarion Monastery/ Tell Umm Amer is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.