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 272 km round trip from Ērgļi - roughly 4 h 50 in the saddle. It goes by way of JACOBSTADT Jekabpils, KARISCHKI Gireišiai and back through JACOBSTADT Jekabpils. It crosses from Latvia into Lithuania - carry ID and check the toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Somewhere in the Latvian countryside, on a modest rise above the Daugava, stands a marker that was once part of the most ambitious measuring job of the nineteenth century. Sestukalns is one of the stations of the Struve Geodetic Arc, a chain of triangulation points that runs for nearly three thousand kilometres from Hammerfest on the Arctic coast of Norway to the Black Sea. The astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve, working out of the observatory at Dorpat, now Tartu, led the survey between 1816 and 1855 to find the size and shape of the Earth, and the result was accurate to a degree that astonished geodesists. It is on the World Heritage list, with a few dozen of the stations that still survive across ten countries.
Read the complete SESTU-KALNS Ziestu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
SESTU-KALNS Ziestu is where the day begins. Next is JACOBSTADT Jekabpils.
Jēkabpils lies on the Daugava, Latvia's great river, in the region called Sēlija, and its older German name, Jacobstadt, tells you who founded it. Duke Jacob Kettler of Courland, who ruled this land in the seventeenth century, planted a town here in 1670 and gave it his name, in the same decade he was trying to found colonies in Tobago and Gambia. The duchy was a small, wealthy state that punched above its weight. Across the river sits Krustpils, an older settlement with a castle, and the two towns grew together over the centuries and were merged in 1962.
Read the complete JACOBSTADT Jekabpils write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
JACOBSTADT Jekabpils comes up about 53 km into the recorded legs. Next is KARISCHKI Gireišiai.
This stop sits in north-eastern Lithuania, in the Aukštaitija highlands near the town of Rokiškis, about twelve kilometres away, and not far from the Latvian border. The name on the map is a mixture of an old German-era spelling and a local village, and the specific site is hard to pin down, so the useful thing is to describe the country around it, which is quiet, gently rolling and full of lakes and woods.
Read the complete KARISCHKI Gireišiai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 136 km into the recorded legs you reach KARISCHKI Gireišiai. Next is back through JACOBSTADT Jekabpils.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete JACOBSTADT Jekabpils write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through JACOBSTADT Jekabpils, late in the day. Next is SESTU-KALNS Ziestu.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete SESTU-KALNS Ziestu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at SESTU-KALNS Ziestu. That is the ride.
SESTU-KALNS Ziestu → JACOBSTADT Jekabpils is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
JACOBSTADT Jekabpils → KARISCHKI Gireišiai is 83 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
KARISCHKI Gireišiai → back through JACOBSTADT Jekabpils is 83 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through JACOBSTADT Jekabpils → SESTU-KALNS Ziestu is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.