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 Hoeilaart it runs 270 km to Hoeilaart; allow about 4 h 43 of riding. The stops in between: Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi, Stadhuis met Belfort, Petit Béguinage de Gent and Béguinage de Dendermonde. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Brussels has a cathedral of trees. The Sonian Forest, or Zoniënwoud, covers about four and a half thousand hectares on the south-eastern edge of the city, and most of it is beech, tall grey-barked trunks that rise like columns, with a canopy so dense that the forest floor under it is open and dim. Some trees are two centuries old, and the pattern of straight, evenly spaced trunks comes from the way the forest was managed in the eighteenth century under Austrian rule, when foresters planted the stands in a deliberate style. Parts of the forest were listed by UNESCO in 2021 as part of the ancient beech forests of Europe.
Read the complete Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A is where the day begins. Next is Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi.
The Grote Markt of Mechelen is one of the grandest squares in Belgium, and on its eastern side stands the old cloth hall with its belfry, a building with a curious history. The hall was built in the fourteenth century, when Mechelen was a rich cloth-making town, and the belfry was planned to be a tall tower, but it was never finished. Its stump was eventually given a pointed roof, and later a sixteenth-century extension in the Renaissance style was begun to house the Great Council of the Netherlands, but that too remained unfinished. The belfry is part of the UNESCO listing of the belfries of Belgium and France.
Read the complete Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Stadhuis met Belfort.
Dendermonde sits where the Dender gives up and pours itself into the Scheldt, and the old town hall on the Grote Markt is the thing you aim for when you roll in. Its belfry is one of the Flemish and Walloon towers grouped together by UNESCO as the Belfries of Belgium and France, and the reason those towers matter is simple: in the medieval Low Countries a belfry was the civic answer to the church spire. It held the town charters, the bell that called the citizens, and the watchman who looked out for fire and for armies. Dendermonde needed the watchman more than most, because a town at a river junction is a town everybody wants, and it was besieged, burned and rebuilt more than once, most brutally in 1914 when German troops set much of it alight.
Read the complete Stadhuis met Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 67 km into the recorded legs you reach Stadhuis met Belfort. Next is Petit Béguinage de Gent.
Push open a gate off a busy Ghent street and the noise drops away. The Klein Begijnhof, the Small Béguinage, is a walled enclave of whitewashed and brick houses with stepped gables around a green courtyard and a Baroque church. Béguines were lay women who lived in community, devoted to prayer and work but without taking permanent vows, and this béguinage was founded in the thirteenth century. Most of the present buildings date from the seventeenth century. Together with other Flemish béguinages, it is on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and it remains one of the calmest places in the city.
Read the complete Petit Béguinage de Gent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Petit Béguinage de Gent, about halfway. Next is Béguinage de Dendermonde.
Push open the gate of the Dendermonde béguinage and the traffic noise of the ring road simply drops away. Inside is a quiet triangle of grass, whitewashed houses with green shutters and a modest church, where for centuries communities of beguines lived. These were laywomen who chose a shared religious life without taking permanent vows, earning their keep with lacework, nursing and teaching. The béguinage is one of thirteen in Flanders listed together by UNESCO, and it is among the most intimate of them.
Read the complete Béguinage de Dendermonde write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Béguinage de Dendermonde sits at 142 km, about halfway. Next is back through Petit Béguinage de Gent.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Petit Béguinage de Gent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Petit Béguinage de Gent comes up about 168 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Stadhuis met Belfort.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stadhuis met Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 201 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Stadhuis met Belfort. Next is back through Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi, late in the day. Next is Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 270 km.
Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A → Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi → Stadhuis met Belfort is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stadhuis met Belfort → Petit Béguinage de Gent is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Petit Béguinage de Gent → Béguinage de Dendermonde is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Béguinage de Dendermonde → back through Petit Béguinage de Gent is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Petit Béguinage de Gent → back through Stadhuis met Belfort is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Stadhuis met Belfort → back through Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ancienne Halle avec Beffroi → Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.