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 Mechelen it runs 179 km to Mechelen; allow about 2 h 54 of riding. On the way it passes Maison Guiete, Stadhuis met Belfort, Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent and back through Stadhuis met Belfort. The line favours views over speed.
Saint Rumbold's Tower dominates the skyline of Mechelen like a very tall stone cliff. It is the bell tower of the cathedral, and it rises to about ninety-seven metres. It was begun in the fourteenth century and was meant to go higher, with a spire that would have made it among the tallest in Europe, but the money ran out and the tower was left with a flat top in the sixteenth century. That unfinished stump is somehow more memorable than a completed spire would have been. It is part of the UNESCO list of belfries of Belgium and France, and a ring of bells hangs inside, including two carillons, one of which is played by hand from a keyboard of wooden batons.
Read the complete Tour de Saint-Rombaut write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tour de Saint-Rombaut is where the day begins. Next is Maison Guiete.
In a leafy residential street in the southern suburbs of Antwerp, there is a white house that looks as if it has walked in from a different century. The Maison Guiette, as it is usually spelled, was designed by Le Corbusier in 1926 for the painter René Guiette, and it was his first building in Belgium. Since 2016 it has been one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of Le Corbusier's architectural work, alongside the Villa Savoye, the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille and buildings on several continents.
Read the complete Maison Guiete write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Maison Guiete comes up about 21 km into the recorded legs. Next is Stadhuis met Belfort.
Dendermonde sits where the Dender gives up and pours itself into the Scheldt, and the old town hall on the Grote Markt is the thing you aim for when you roll in. Its belfry is one of the Flemish and Walloon towers grouped together by UNESCO as the Belfries of Belgium and France, and the reason those towers matter is simple: in the medieval Low Countries a belfry was the civic answer to the church spire. It held the town charters, the bell that called the citizens, and the watchman who looked out for fire and for armies. Dendermonde needed the watchman more than most, because a town at a river junction is a town everybody wants, and it was besieged, burned and rebuilt more than once, most brutally in 1914 when German troops set much of it alight.
Read the complete Stadhuis met Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 57 km into the recorded legs you reach Stadhuis met Belfort. Next is Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent.
The Great Béguinage of Sint-Amandsberg looks like a small walled town of its own, tucked into a residential suburb just east of the centre of Ghent. When the city expanded in the 1870s and the old béguinage of St Elisabeth was in the way, the beguines, lay religious women who lived in community without taking permanent vows, moved here to a new complex of neo-Gothic houses, convents and a church, all laid out around streets, squares and gardens behind a wall and gate. The move was funded by the Duke of Arenberg, and the whole place was finished in just a few years. It is one of the thirteen Flemish Béguinages on the UNESCO list since 1998, and although the beguines are gone, the houses are still lived in, and the atmosphere is calm and quiet.
Read the complete Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent, about halfway. Next is back through Stadhuis met Belfort.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stadhuis met Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Stadhuis met Belfort sits at 125 km, about halfway. Next is back through Maison Guiete.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Maison Guiete write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Maison Guiete comes up about 159 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tour de Saint-Rombaut.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tour de Saint-Rombaut write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tour de Saint-Rombaut closes the day.
Tour de Saint-Rombaut → Maison Guiete is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Maison Guiete → Stadhuis met Belfort is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stadhuis met Belfort → Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent → back through Stadhuis met Belfort is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Stadhuis met Belfort → back through Maison Guiete is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Maison Guiete → Tour de Saint-Rombaut is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.