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 339 km round trip from Pola de Lena - roughly 4 h 37 in the saddle. It goes by way of Cámara Santa de Oviedo, Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador, La Foncalada and Eglise Santa Maria de Soto de Luiña. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
On a grassy knoll above the Lena valley, south of Oviedo, stands a tiny stone church that has watched over the main road between Asturias and Castile for more than a thousand years. Santa Cristina de Lena is one of the jewels of Asturian pre-Romanesque architecture, built in the ninth century when the little Christian kingdom of Asturias was the only part of Iberia outside Muslim rule. Its unusual plan, with a raised presbytery behind an arcade of carved arches, and its finely worked stone screens are unique. Together with Santa María del Naranco and San Miguel de Lillo in Oviedo, it is part of a World Heritage listing.
Read the complete Santa Cristina de Lena write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Santa Cristina de Lena is where the day begins. Next is Cámara Santa de Oviedo.
Oviedo is a surprise, a small, green, rainy capital with an almost Alpine smell of woodsmoke and a history that begins with a king. In the early ninth century Alfonso II, called the Chaste, moved his court here and began building churches in a style now called Asturian pre-Romanesque, which is unlike anything else in Spain, with tall narrow proportions, round arches and decorated stone. The Cámara Santa is a chapel inside the cathedral of San Salvador, built to protect relics and treasures, and it still holds the Cross of the Angels, dated to 808, and the Cross of Victory, which belonged to the later king Alfonso III and became the emblem of Asturias. UNESCO included the city's early monuments in its list in 1985.
Read the complete Cámara Santa de Oviedo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cámara Santa de Oviedo comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador.
Pilgrims have been trudging past these walls for about a thousand years, which makes a motorcycle look like a rather recent idea. The monastery of San Salvador de Cornellana stands beside the Narcea river in central Asturias, on the old inland route to Santiago that runs west from Oviedo through Grado and Salas. It was founded in the eleventh century, passed to the Benedictines of Cluny, and the church that survives keeps Romanesque bones under later remodelling. The bulk of the cloister and the old monastic buildings give the little village a weight that seems out of proportion to its size.
Read the complete Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 70 km into the recorded legs you reach Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador. Next is La Foncalada.
Oviedo has a tiny fountain that is older than almost everything else in the city, and it sits in a gap between two streets a few steps from the cathedral. La Foncalada, a little stone building with a gabled front and a pool inside, was built in the ninth century in the time of King Alfonso III, and it is the only surviving civil building of the Asturian pre-Romanesque style in the capital. Water from a spring still flows through it, and a pilgrim on the Camino Primitivo, the oldest of the routes to Santiago, passes by on the way through town. It is easy to walk past without noticing, which would be a pity.
Read the complete La Foncalada write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La Foncalada, about halfway. Next is Eglise Santa Maria de Soto de Luiña.
Soto de Luiña is a quiet parish in western Asturias, a short way inland from one of the wildest stretches of the Cantabrian coast, and its church of Santa María is the reason the village has a name beyond the region. The building is baroque, rebuilt in the eighteenth century around older foundations, and alongside it stands the former pilgrims' hospital that once took in walkers on the coastal Way of Saint James. The church's interior, with its gilded altarpieces, comes as a surprise in such a small place, and the whole ensemble gives a sense of how the Camino shaped even modest villages along the route.
Read the complete Eglise Santa Maria de Soto de Luiña write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Eglise Santa Maria de Soto de Luiña sits at 156 km, about halfway. Next is back through La Foncalada.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Foncalada write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through La Foncalada comes up about 235 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 269 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador. Next is back through Cámara Santa de Oviedo.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cámara Santa de Oviedo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cámara Santa de Oviedo, late in the day. Next is Santa Cristina de Lena.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Santa Cristina de Lena write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 339 km.
Santa Cristina de Lena → Cámara Santa de Oviedo is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cámara Santa de Oviedo → Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador → La Foncalada is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Foncalada → Eglise Santa Maria de Soto de Luiña is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Eglise Santa Maria de Soto de Luiña → back through La Foncalada is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through La Foncalada → back through Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Eglise et Monastère de San Salvador → back through Cámara Santa de Oviedo is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cámara Santa de Oviedo → Santa Cristina de Lena is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.