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.
From Beicang it runs 351 km to Beicang; allow about 4 h 51 of riding. On the way it passes Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal, Summer Palace, Ming Tombs and back through Summer Palace. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 45 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
The flat country west of Tianjin looks like nothing much, a plain of poplars, canals, fish ponds and warehouses, but under it lies the engineering that fed imperial Beijing. The Grand Canal ran from the Yangtze delta to the north, and here the northern and southern branches met the rivers that flow into the Haihe and out toward the sea. This confluence, the junction of the Bei Canal and the Nan Canal, is part of the section of the canal that UNESCO listed in 2014, and it gives you a sense of how important water was to the Chinese state.
Read the complete Sanchkou Section of Bei Canal and Nana Can write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sanchkou Section of Bei Canal and Nana Can is where the day begins. Next is Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal.
For centuries, Beijing depended on grain shipped from the south along the Grand Canal, the longest artificial waterway in the world, and Tongzhou was where the boats arrived. The Tonghui canal connected Tongzhou with the capital, carrying grain, timber and goods to the city's markets and granaries. The Grand Canal, built and rebuilt over more than two thousand years, was listed by UNESCO in 2014, and the Tongzhou section is its northernmost part. Today, the waterfront has been landscaped into parks, with walkways, bridges and the old Ranteng pagoda rising above the water.
Read the complete Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal comes up 65 km in. Next is Summer Palace.
The Summer Palace is the Qing court's idea of escaping the city, and even with the modern capital spread out around it, the idea still works. The core is Kunming Lake, a large artificial basin, with Longevity Hill rising from its northern shore and covered in halls, pavilions and the tall Tower of Buddhist Incense. The Qianlong Emperor shaped the garden in the mid eighteenth century, reportedly to celebrate his mother's birthday, and modelled parts of it on the scenery around West Lake in Hangzhou. British and French troops burned it during the Second Opium War in 1860, and the Empress Dowager Cixi rebuilt it later in the century, which is where the famous story comes from that she paid for it with money meant for the navy. The marble boat moored at the lakeshore, which cannot sail, has become the punchline of that tale.
Read the complete Summer Palace write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
130 km in you reach Summer Palace. Next is Ming Tombs.
North of Beijing, where the plain meets the first ridges of the Jundu mountains, thirteen emperors of the Ming dynasty lie buried in a broad valley chosen for its perfect feng shui: mountains behind, a gentle slope, water in front. The first to be buried here was the Yongle emperor, the ruler who moved the capital to Beijing and built the Forbidden City in the early fifteenth century; his tomb, Changling, is the largest and best preserved, with a magnificent hall supported by enormous columns of nanmu wood. UNESCO lists them with the other imperial tombs of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Read the complete Ming Tombs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ming Tombs, about halfway. Next is back through Summer Palace.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Summer Palace write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Summer Palace sits at 259 km, about halfway. Next is back through Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal comes up 324 km in. Next is Sanchkou Section of Bei Canal and Nana Can.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sanchkou Section of Bei Canal and Nana Can write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sanchkou Section of Bei Canal and Nana Can closes the day.
Sanchkou Section of Bei Canal and Nana Can → Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal is 109 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal → Summer Palace is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Summer Palace → Ming Tombs is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ming Tombs → back through Summer Palace is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Summer Palace → back through Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal → Sanchkou Section of Bei Canal and Nana Can is 109 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.