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 Beijing it runs 233 km to Beijing; allow about 3 h 49 of riding. On the way it passes Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal, Summer Palace, Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian and back through Summer Palace. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 58 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
The Temple of Heaven was where the emperors of China spoke to the sky. Built in the early fifteenth century under the Yongle emperor, the same ruler who ordered the Forbidden City, it was the stage for a ritual that the Ming and Qing emperors performed each year, at the winter solstice, to pray for good harvests and report to Heaven on the state of the empire. Heaven was imagined as round and Earth as square, and the geometry of the complex follows that idea: round buildings and altars on a square ground.
Read the complete Temple of Heaven: an Imperial Sacrificial write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Temple of Heaven: an Imperial Sacrificial is where the day begins. Next is Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal.
For centuries, Beijing depended on grain shipped from the south along the Grand Canal, the longest artificial waterway in the world, and Tongzhou was where the boats arrived. The Tonghui canal connected Tongzhou with the capital, carrying grain, timber and goods to the city's markets and granaries. The Grand Canal, built and rebuilt over more than two thousand years, was listed by UNESCO in 2014, and the Tongzhou section is its northernmost part. Today, the waterfront has been landscaped into parks, with walkways, bridges and the old Ranteng pagoda rising above the water.
Read the complete Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Summer Palace.
The Empress Dowager Cixi is said to have spent money meant for the Chinese navy on rebuilding the Summer Palace, and the story is captured in stone: a marble boat moored permanently at the edge of Kunming Lake, a ship that will never sail. Whether the tale is entirely fair to her is debated, but the palace itself is beyond argument, a vast imperial garden of lakes, hills, halls, pavilions, bridges and covered walkways on the north-western edge of Beijing, laid out in the eighteenth century under the Qianlong Emperor, burned by British and French troops in 1860, rebuilt and burned again in 1900, and restored once more. It was listed by UNESCO in 1998 as a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design.
Read the complete Summer Palace write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 71 km into the recorded legs you reach Summer Palace. Next is Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian.
In the 1920s and 1930s, excavations in the limestone caves of Dragon Bone Hill at Zhoukoudian, south-west of Beijing, uncovered the remains of early humans who lived here hundreds of thousands of years ago. They became known as Peking Man, a population of Homo erectus, and in 1929 the Chinese archaeologist Pei Wenzhong found a nearly complete skull. The fossils caused a sensation, offering evidence of early humans in Asia and their use of fire. Then, in 1941, during the Japanese occupation, the original bones were packed for shipment to the United States and vanished; their fate remains one of the great mysteries of archaeology. The site is listed by UNESCO, and a museum displays casts and later finds.
Read the complete Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian, about halfway. Next is back through Summer Palace.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Summer Palace write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Summer Palace sits at 169 km, about halfway. Next is back through Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal comes up about 209 km into the recorded legs. Next is Temple of Heaven: an Imperial Sacrificial.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Temple of Heaven: an Imperial Sacrificial write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Temple of Heaven: an Imperial Sacrificial closes the day.
Temple of Heaven: an Imperial Sacrificial → Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal → Summer Palace is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Summer Palace → Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian → back through Summer Palace is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Summer Palace → back through Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tongzhou Section of Tonghui Canal → Temple of Heaven: an Imperial Sacrificial is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.