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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 965 km round trip from Al Muharraq - roughly 16 h 39 in the saddle. The stops in between: Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field, Al Zubarah Archaeological Site and back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field. It crosses from Bahrain into Qatar - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The Siyadi family did not only build mosques and houses; they also built shops, and the row of old shops in Muharraq is a reminder that a pearl merchant was also a businessman who understood the value of property. Streets of single-storey units, with wooden shutters and plain fronts, stand near the family's other buildings in the old town, and they once held traders selling cloth, rice, spices, dates and the everyday goods a town needs. Pearls themselves were usually sold privately, in the majlis, to buyers who knew what they were doing.
Read the complete Siyadi Shops write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Siyadi Shops is where the day begins. Next is Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field.
Flat, pale and apparently empty, the central plain of Bahrain hides one of the oldest cemeteries on earth. Some four thousand years ago the island of Dilmun, as it was known to the Sumerians, buried its dead under thousands upon thousands of low stone mounds, and in places like Madinat Hamad and A'ali the mounds still stand in dense, grey fields. At one time there may have been several hundred thousand of them, which would have made Dilmun a famous necropolis in its day, and many have since been flattened by roads, housing and quarrying.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field comes up about 117 km into the recorded legs. Next is Al Zubarah Archaeological Site.
Out on the north-west coast of Qatar, where the desert slides into a shallow turquoise sea, stand the low ruins of Al Zubarah, once one of the busiest pearling and trading towns in the Gulf. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the town thrived on pearls dived from the oyster beds offshore, traded on to India, Persia and beyond. Then it declined, was abandoned in the early twentieth century, and the sand covered it. Archaeologists have since uncovered streets, houses, a souk, mosques and a long town wall running in an arc around the old harbour. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2013.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 483 km into the recorded legs you reach Al Zubarah Archaeological Site. Next is back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field, late in the day. Next is Siyadi Shops.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Siyadi Shops write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Siyadi Shops. That is the ride.
Siyadi Shops → Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field is 117 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field → Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 366 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field is 366 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field → Siyadi Shops is 117 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.