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.
A 320 km round trip from Carnago - roughly 5 h 23 in the saddle. On the way it passes Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal, VI.1-Emissario and back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,600 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
The Lombards get a bad press in most history books, which tend to treat them as the barbarians who arrived in Italy in 568 and broke what was left of Roman order. Castelseprio tells a subtler story. On a wooded spur above the Olona valley, north-west of Milan, stand the ruins of a late Roman and Lombard castrum, a fortified town that controlled the road between the plain and the Alpine lakes, and just outside its walls is the little church of Santa Maria foris portas, whose frescoes are among the most mysterious and beautiful paintings of early medieval Europe. Down by the river, the stout stone Torba tower, later part of a Benedictine nunnery, completes the group. Together they form one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of the Lombards in Italy.
Read the complete The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c is where the day begins. Next is Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Varallo is a small town at the point where the Valsesia stops being a wide valley and starts becoming a mountain one, and above it, on a rocky spur reached by a winding road or a short cable car, is the oldest and most ambitious of the Sacri Monti. In 1491 a Franciscan friar called Bernardino Caimi, back from the Holy Land, set out to recreate Jerusalem here for pilgrims who could never make the journey. The result is a hilltop village of more than forty chapels filled with life-size painted terracotta and wooden figures, hundreds of them, telling the life of Christ like a frozen theatre. Gaudenzio Ferrari, the great Renaissance painter of this valley, worked on many of them.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal comes up about 84 km into the recorded legs. Next is VI.1-Emissario, 65 km on.
Lago di Viverone is a small, warm lake in northern Piedmont, cupped inside one of the most remarkable glacial landforms in Europe. Ice flowing out of the Aosta Valley during the last glaciations dumped a vast ring of moraine here, the Morainic Amphitheatre of Ivrea, and its eastern wall, the Serra, runs for many kilometres as an almost perfectly straight wooded ridge. The lake sits at the foot of it, with the villages of Viverone and Azeglio on its shores and Ivrea around a quarter of an hour's ride to the northwest.
Read the complete VI.1-Emissario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 159 km into the recorded legs you reach VI.1-Emissario. Next is back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal, late in the day. Next is The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c. That is the ride.
The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c → Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 84 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → VI.1-Emissario is 75 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
VI.1-Emissario → back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 75 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c is 85 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.