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.
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 100 km round trip from Wieliczka - roughly 2 h 06 in the saddle. On the way it passes Historic Centre of Kraków, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: the Mannerist Archi and back through Historic Centre of Kraków. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 17 km this is Polish Eagles Nests Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
For more than seven hundred years, miners dug salt out of the ground at Wieliczka, and when they stopped selling it in 2007 they were still at it. The deposit is a gift of an ancient sea, a salt layer laid down some thirteen million years ago in the Miocene, and when the Polish kings came upon it, in the Middle Ages, salt was as good as money. At one stage the mine provided a large share of the royal revenue, and Kraków became rich on the proceeds. The mine now reaches over three hundred metres deep, with hundreds of kilometres of tunnels, and was one of the first twelve sites ever put on the UNESCO World Heritage list, in 1978.
Read the complete Salt Mine in Wieliczka write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Salt Mine in Wieliczka is where the day begins. Next is Historic Centre of Kraków.
Every hour, a trumpeter plays a short melody from the taller tower of St Mary's Basilica on Kraków's market square, and every time the tune breaks off abruptly mid-phrase. Legend says it commemorates a watchman shot by a Tatar arrow in the throat as he sounded the alarm in the thirteenth century, and the hejnał has been played that way ever since, broadcast daily on Polish radio at noon. It is a fitting introduction to a city that wears its history so openly. The Rynek Główny, the main square, is one of the largest medieval squares in Europe, with the Renaissance Cloth Hall in the middle, and the historic centre, including Wawel Hill and the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz, was among the first sites ever placed on the UNESCO list in 1978.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Kraków write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic Centre of Kraków comes up 28 km in. Next is Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: the Mannerist Archi.
In 1600, Mikołaj Zebrzydowski, a Polish nobleman, began to build a chapel on a hill south-west of Kraków, modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Over the following decades, he and his descendants added dozens of chapels and churches spread over the hills, laid out to recreate the Passion of Christ and the life of the Virgin, with the landscape itself standing in for Jerusalem. The result, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Poland and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1999.
Read the complete Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: the Mannerist Archi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
56 km in you reach Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: the Mannerist Archi. Next is back through Historic Centre of Kraków.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Kraków write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Historic Centre of Kraków, late in the day. Next is Salt Mine in Wieliczka.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Salt Mine in Wieliczka write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Salt Mine in Wieliczka. That is the ride.
Salt Mine in Wieliczka → Historic Centre of Kraków is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historic Centre of Kraków → Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: the Mannerist Archi is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: the Mannerist Archi → back through Historic Centre of Kraków is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Historic Centre of Kraków → Salt Mine in Wieliczka is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.