CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Tarragona it runs 215 km to Tarragona; allow about 3 h 21 of riding. On the way it passes Triumphal Arch of Berá, Abric de Can Castellvi, Crypt at the Colònia Güell and back through Abric de Can Castellvi. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Chariots in Tarragona raced beneath the walls of the upper city, and the great circus where they ran is still there, though it is hard to see as a whole, because the medieval and modern town grew over it. The Circus was built in the late first century AD, and it was well over three hundred metres long, with room for many thousands of spectators. Today you find its vaulted corridors under the Plaça de la Font and its curved stands incorporated into the buildings around it, with a tower, the Torre del Pretori, rising over one end. The legend says that Pontius Pilate was born here, or at least lived in the tower, a story with no historical basis but which the Tarragonans like to repeat.
Read the complete The Circus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Circus is where the day begins. Next is Triumphal Arch of Berá.
For centuries traffic on the main coastal road of Catalonia drove straight through a Roman triumphal arch. The Arc de Berà stands on the line of the Via Augusta, the great Roman road from the Pyrenees to Cádiz, about twenty kilometres northeast of Tarragona, and until the road was diverted around it in the late twentieth century, cars and trucks passed under its single span. It was built at the end of the first century BC, and an inscription records that it was erected according to the will of Lucius Licinius Sura, a figure whose identity historians still discuss. It is part of the UNESCO listing for the Roman remains of Tarraco.
Read the complete Triumphal Arch of Berá write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Triumphal Arch of Berá comes up 32 km in. Next is Abric de Can Castellvi.
The Penedès is wine country, and the landscape around Vilafranca del Penedès is a patchwork of vineyards rolling away toward the Montserrat massif in the north and the limestone hills of the Garraf in the south. Abric de Can Castellví is a small rock shelter in this landscape, one of the many sites of Levantine and schematic rock art scattered across Catalonia and included in the UNESCO serial site of the rock art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula. Like many such sites, it is modest in appearance, a hollow in the rock where faint painted figures have survived thousands of years, and access is often limited to protect the art.
Read the complete Abric de Can Castellvi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
64 km in you reach Abric de Can Castellvi. Next is Crypt at the Colònia Güell.
Few people ride out of Barcelona expecting to find Gaudí in a mill village, but that is exactly what waits at Santa Coloma de Cervelló, a short hop up the Llobregat from Sant Boi. The Colònia Güell was a textile colony founded by the industrialist Eusebi Güell, who moved his cotton works out of the city in the 1890s and built housing, a school, shops and a theatre for the workers around the factory. He asked his friend Antoni Gaudí for a church. Gaudí spent about ten years on the design and its foundations, and when money and the Güell family's enthusiasm ran out around 1914, only the lower level had been finished. That crypt is what you come to see.
Read the complete Crypt at the Colònia Güell write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Crypt at the Colònia Güell, about halfway. Next is back through Abric de Can Castellvi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Abric de Can Castellvi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Abric de Can Castellvi sits at 129 km, about halfway. Next is back through Triumphal Arch of Berá.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Triumphal Arch of Berá write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Triumphal Arch of Berá comes up 161 km in. Next is The Circus.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Circus write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Circus closes the day.
The Circus → Triumphal Arch of Berá is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Triumphal Arch of Berá → Abric de Can Castellvi is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Abric de Can Castellví → Crypt at the Colònia Güell is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Crypt at the Colònia Güell → back through Abric de Can Castellvi is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Abric de Can Castellvi → back through Triumphal Arch of Berá is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Triumphal Arch of Berá → The Circus is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.