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.
From Xunzhong it runs 568 km to Xunzhong; allow about 8 h 29 of riding. The stops in between: Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang, Fujian Tulou, Huaiyuan Lou and back through Fujian Tulou. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Dehua, a county in the mountains of Fujian province, in south-eastern China, has been making porcelain for over a thousand years. Its white porcelain, known in the West as blanc de Chine, is famous for its pure, creamy white colour and its fine figures, especially statues of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, and other Buddhist and Taoist figures. The ancient kiln sites of Dehua, including long dragon kilns built on hillsides, are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China, inscribed in 2021.
Read the complete Sites of Dehua Kilns write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sites of Dehua Kilns is where the day begins. Next is Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang.
In the green hills of Anxi county, inland from the port city of Quanzhou in Fujian, the Xiacaopu site preserves the remains of an iron industry that flourished during the Song and Yuan dynasties, roughly from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. Archaeologists found furnaces, slag heaps, ore-roasting pits and workshops on a hillside, evidence of large-scale production. The iron produced here was shipped down the rivers to Quanzhou and exported to Southeast Asia and beyond, and that is why the site is part of the World Heritage listing of Quanzhou, Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan China, inscribed in 2021. At that time, Quanzhou was one of the largest ports in the world, visited by Arab, Persian and Indian merchants, and described by Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta.
Read the complete Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang comes up about 76 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fujian Tulou.
Picture a giant ring of rammed earth, three or four storeys high, with almost no windows on the outside and a single heavy gate. Inside, galleries of wooden rooms face a courtyard with an ancestral hall at its heart, and up to several hundred members of one extended family once lived within those walls. That is a tulou, and the hills of south-western Fujian are dotted with them, round and square, some centuries old, many still inhabited.
Read the complete Fujian Tulou write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 140 km into the recorded legs you reach Fujian Tulou. Next is Huaiyuan Lou.
Huaiyuan Lou is a tulou in Nanjing County, the name meaning something like a house that cherishes distant things, and it sits in a valley of tea terraces and bamboo in the same group of earthen buildings as its better-known neighbours. The lou form, a tall rectangular or square block of several storeys, differs from the round tulou, and the dwellings of this type are often built on a regular grid with the main hall facing south, as the principles of fengshui required. The orientation, the position of the gate and the placement of the well and the ancestral hall were all weighed by a geomancer before the first wall was raised.
Read the complete Huaiyuan Lou write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Huaiyuan Lou, about halfway. Next is back through Fujian Tulou.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fujian Tulou write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fujian Tulou sits at 272 km, about halfway. Next is back through Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang comes up about 486 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sites of Dehua Kilns.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sites of Dehua Kilns write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sites of Dehua Kilns closes the day.
Sites of Dehua Kilns → Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang is 76 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang → Fujian Tulou is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fujian Tulou → Huaiyuan Lou is 145 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Huaiyuan Lou → back through Fujian Tulou is 145 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Fujian Tulou → back through Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Xiacaopu Iron Production Site of Qingyang → Sites of Dehua Kilns is 83 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.