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 Taranto it runs 403 km to Taranto; allow about 6 h 46 of riding. The stops in between: The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast, The Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian C and back through The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 65 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Taranto is a city between two seas. The old town sits on a small island between the Mar Grande, an open bay of the Gulf of Taranto, and the Mar Piccolo, an inner lagoon, connected to the mainland by bridges, including a swing bridge that opens to let warships pass into the naval base. Founded by Spartan colonists in the eighth century BC as Taras, it became one of the richest and most powerful cities of Magna Graecia, the Greek world in southern Italy, before falling to Rome.
Read the complete Tarentum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tarentum is where the day begins. Next is The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast.
Between Ostuni and Brindisi, along the Adriatic coast of Puglia, ran the Via Appia Traiana, a road built by the emperor Trajan in the early second century as a faster alternative to the old Appian Way, carrying traffic to the port of Brundisium, the gateway to Greece and the East. In 2024, stretches of both roads were inscribed by UNESCO as Via Appia, Regina Viarum. Here the old route followed the coastal plain through olive groves, and traces of it, together with ancient settlements, can be found near the sea.
Read the complete The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast comes up about 69 km into the recorded legs. Next is The Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian C.
Matera is one of those places where the first view genuinely changes the mood of a day. You walk to the edge of the modern town, look down, and there are the Sassi: two hollows in the limestone filled with houses stacked on top of each other, their roofs serving as streets for the houses above, churches cut into the rock, staircases and alleys tumbling down to the edge of a deep ravine, the Gravina. Across the gorge, the Murgia plateau is riddled with caves and rock churches, some with Byzantine frescoes, used by monks and shepherds for over a thousand years. People have lived in these caves since prehistoric times, which makes Matera one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world.
Read the complete The Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian C write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 185 km into the recorded legs you reach The Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian C. Next is back through The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast, late in the day. Next is Tarentum.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tarentum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Tarentum. That is the ride.
Tarentum → The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast → The Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian C is 116 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
The Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian C → back through The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast is 150 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through The Appia Traiana along the Adriatic coast → Tarentum is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.