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 99 km round trip from Tarragona - roughly 1 h 38 in the saddle. It goes by way of Triumphal Arch of Berá, Abric de Can Castellvi and back through Triumphal Arch of Berá. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Rome built a road through Spain, and this tower stands beside what was left of it. The Torre dels Escipions, the Tower of the Scipios, is a tall, square funerary monument, about nine metres high in its present state, on the old line of the Via Augusta a few kilometres from Tarragona. It was built in the first century AD, and for a long time people thought it was the tomb of the Scipio brothers, the Roman generals who died fighting the Carthaginians in Spain around 211 BC. That story is almost certainly false, but the name stuck.
Read the complete Tower of the Scipios write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tower of the Scipios 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 about 18 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 51 km into the recorded legs you reach Abric de Can Castellvi. 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, late in the day. Next is Tower of the Scipios.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tower of the Scipios write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Tower of the Scipios. That is the ride.
Tower of the Scipios → Triumphal Arch of Berá is 18 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 → 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 → Tower of the Scipios is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.