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.
338 km from Urbania to Urbania, about 6 h 41 of riding. The stops in between: Gessi di Onferno, Teatro Angelo Mariani, Sasso Fratino and back through Teatro Angelo Mariani. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Urbania has had three names. It began as Castel delle Ripe, became Casteldurante in the thirteenth century, and was renamed in 1636 when Pope Urban VIII took over the duchy and gave it his own. In the Renaissance it was a pottery town, famous for majolica, the tin-glazed painted earthenware that Duke Guidobaldo and his court sent as gifts around Europe, and the ceramics still sold in the shops carry on that tradition. The theatre that bears the name of Bramante, the great architect who was born in nearby Fermignano, stands in the town centre, a small, intimate house with tiers of boxes in the Italian manner, and the town itself is a small walled place on a bend of the Metauro river, with brick arcades and a handsome ducal palace.
Read the complete Teatro Bramante write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Teatro Bramante is where the day begins. Next is Gessi di Onferno.
The hills behind Rimini hide a surprising piece of geology. Around the hamlet of Onferno, in the comune of Gemmano, the ground is made of gypsum, laid down when the Mediterranean dried out millions of years ago and then pushed up into these ridges. Water dissolves gypsum easily, so the landscape is pocked with sinkholes, blind valleys and caves, and the Grotta di Onferno winds for hundreds of metres beneath the village. The name is often linked to inferno, supposedly because vapour rising from the cave mouth in cold weather looked like the breath of hell.
Read the complete Gessi di Onferno write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gessi di Onferno comes up about 45 km into the recorded legs. Next is Teatro Angelo Mariani.
Sant'Agata Feltria is a small hill town in the upper Marecchia valley, with a castle on a rock, steep streets and one of the oldest wooden theatres in Italy. The Teatro Angelo Mariani dates from the early seventeenth century and has been rebuilt and restored over the centuries, with tiers of wooden boxes painted in soft colours around a small stage. It is named after Angelo Mariani, a nineteenth-century conductor who was a close collaborator of Verdi. The theatre is intimate, seating a few hundred at most, and it still hosts concerts and plays.
Read the complete Teatro Angelo Mariani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 97 km into the recorded legs you reach Teatro Angelo Mariani. Next is Sasso Fratino.
Sasso Fratino is a forest you are not allowed to enter, and that is precisely the point. High on the Romagna side of the Apennine ridge, in the national park of the Casentino forests, it was declared Italy's first integral nature reserve in 1959, and since then nature has been left almost entirely to itself. Ancient beech woods cling to steep slopes, with silver fir, maple and ash mixed in, and dead trees are left to rot where they fall, feeding fungi, beetles and birds. In 2017 it became part of the transnational World Heritage listing of ancient beech forests of Europe.
Read the complete Sasso Fratino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sasso Fratino, about halfway. Next is back through Teatro Angelo Mariani.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Teatro Angelo Mariani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Teatro Angelo Mariani sits at 149 km, about halfway. Next is back through Gessi di Onferno.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Gessi di Onferno write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Gessi di Onferno comes up about 294 km into the recorded legs. Next is Teatro Bramante.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Teatro Bramante write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Teatro Bramante closes the day.
Teatro Bramante → Gessi di Onferno is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Gessi di Onferno → Teatro Angelo Mariani is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Teatro Angelo Mariani → Sasso Fratino is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sasso Fratino → back through Teatro Angelo Mariani is 76 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Teatro Angelo Mariani → back through Gessi di Onferno is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Gessi di Onferno → Teatro Bramante is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.