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 Benevento it runs 395 km to Benevento; allow about 6 h 51 of riding. On the way it passes Pompeii, Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region and back through Pompeii. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Benevento has been a crossroads for about as long as there has been a road to cross, but the Santa Sofia complex belongs to a particular chapter, the Lombards. In the eighth century the duchy of Benevento was the last Lombard power in southern Italy, and Duke Arechis II built Santa Sofia as his palace church, around the 760s. It is a strange, beautiful building, a hexagon surrounded by a ring of columns and walls, with an odd star-like plan that has puzzled architects ever since. Inside the plain stone are traces of frescoes, and the later Romanesque cloister next door is a lovely quiet square. It is part of the UNESCO listing for the Longobards in Italy, which came in 2011.
Read the complete The Santa Sofia complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Santa Sofia complex is where the day begins. Next is Pompeii.
Nobody in Pompeii knew that Vesuvius was a volcano. The town had been shaken by a violent earthquake in 62 AD and was still rebuilding in August 79, when the mountain exploded, burying the streets under a rain of pumice and then a hot flow of ash. About two thousand people died in the town, and the ash preserved bread in ovens, graffiti on walls, ruts in the stone roads and the hollows left by bodies. Excavation began in 1748, and in the 1860s the archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli poured plaster into the hollows to produce the figures you see in the museum. UNESCO listed the archaeological areas of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 1997.
Read the complete Pompeii write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pompeii comes up about 94 km into the recorded legs. Next is Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region.
According to legend, the siren Leucosia threw herself into the sea here after failing to lure Odysseus to his doom, and her body became the little island off Punta Licosa. It is a fine story for a fine place. Punta Licosa is a low, wild headland on the coast of the Cilento, south of Salerno, covered in Mediterranean scrub, pines and holm oaks, with rocky coves and clear water, and it forms part of the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, listed by UNESCO in 1998 as a cultural landscape. Behind it rises Monte Stella, the mountain that gives its name to the surrounding hills, dotted with small villages and terraced olive groves.
Read the complete Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 197 km into the recorded legs you reach Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region. Next is back through Pompeii.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pompeii write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pompeii, late in the day. Next is The Santa Sofia complex.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Santa Sofia complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at The Santa Sofia complex. That is the ride.
The Santa Sofia complex → Pompeii is 94 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Pompeii → Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region is 103 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region → back through Pompeii is 104 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Pompeii → The Santa Sofia complex is 93 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.