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.
255 km from Amsterdam to Amsterdam, about 4 h 15 of riding. It goes by way of Droogmakerij de Beemster, Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden, Frontiers of the Roman Empire - The Lower and back through Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden. The line favours views over speed.
This part of the ride is 41 km of Dutch Flower Route.
Nobody rides a motorbike into the Amsterdam canal ring for the curves. You come because in the early seventeenth century, the city at the height of its Golden Age planned an extension of startling ambition: three main canals, the Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, laid out in concentric arcs around the medieval core, lined with tall, narrow merchants' houses with gabled roofs and hoisting beams. Work began in 1613, and the result, a UNESCO site since 2010, is still one of the most admired examples of urban planning in the world.
Read the complete Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is where the day begins. Next is Droogmakerij de Beemster.
In 1612 a lake north of Amsterdam disappeared. Wealthy merchants, flush with money from the Dutch trading boom, financed the draining of the Beemster, and the engineer Jan Adriaenszoon Leeghwater used dozens of windmills to pump the water out into a ring canal. What remained was a polder several metres below sea level, laid out in a perfectly regular grid of roads, canals and fields based on Renaissance ideas of order and proportion. The Beemster was inscribed by UNESCO in 1999 as a masterpiece of creative planning, and from above it looks like a ruled sheet of paper.
Read the complete Droogmakerij de Beemster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Droogmakerij de Beemster comes up about 31 km into the recorded legs. Next is Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden.
At the mouth of the North Sea Canal, where giant locks let ocean-going ships into the waterway that leads to Amsterdam, a round island fort sits in the middle of the harbour. This is Fort IJmuiden, also called Forteiland, built in the 1880s as the westernmost stronghold of the Defence Line of Amsterdam, a ring of forts, dikes and flood fields designed to protect the capital by inundating the land around it. The Defence Line, now part of the UNESCO-listed Dutch Water Defence Lines, is one of the more ingenious military systems ever devised: rather than walls, it relied on water a few decimetres deep, too shallow for boats and too deep for marching.
Read the complete Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 72 km into the recorded legs you reach Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden. Next is Frontiers of the Roman Empire - The Lower.
Where the old Rhine reached the North Sea, near the modern town of Katwijk, the Romans built a string of forts, and Valkenburg was one of them. The Dutch Valkenburg, a village near Leiden, not to be confused with its namesake in Limburg, was the site of a fort and harbour called Praetorium Agrippinae, a base on the northern frontier of the empire that stood on the south bank of the river. Along this stretch the Rhine formed the border of the Roman province of Lower Germany, and the line of forts, watchtowers and roads along it is part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage listing.
Read the complete Frontiers of the Roman Empire - The Lower write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Frontiers of the Roman Empire - The Lower, about halfway. Next is back through Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden sits at 141 km, about halfway. Next is back through Droogmakerij de Beemster.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Droogmakerij de Beemster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Droogmakerij de Beemster comes up about 224 km into the recorded legs. Next is Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams closes the day.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → Droogmakerij de Beemster is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Droogmakerij de Beemster → Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden → Frontiers of the Roman Empire - The Lower is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Frontiers of the Roman Empire - The Lower → back through Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden → back through Droogmakerij de Beemster is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Droogmakerij de Beemster → Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.