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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
354 km from Uedem to Uedem, about 6 h 06 of riding. On the way it passes Kleve-Keeken, Tiel Inundation Canal, Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk and Works along the IJ before Diemerdam. It crosses from Germany into Netherlands - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Between Uedem and Kalkar, the Hochwald is a block of forest on a low ridge in the flat country of the Lower Rhine, a few kilometres from the Dutch border. It looks like a quiet, orderly German woodland, with rows of pine and beech, forest tracks and the smell of resin, but the ridge has a hard history. In February and March 1945, during the Allied offensive to clear the area between the Maas and the Rhine, known as Operation Veritable, the Hochwald was part of a German defensive line, and some of the fiercest fighting of the campaign took place among its trees, with tanks bogged in mud and infantry digging in under shell fire.
Read the complete Uedem-Hochwald | Hochwald 12 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Uedem-Hochwald | Hochwald 12 is where the day begins. Next is Kleve-Keeken.
Here the Rhine stops being a German river. Just downstream of the village of Keeken, the great river crosses the border into the Netherlands, and a few kilometres further on it divides, with the Waal carrying most of the water west and the Pannerdens Canal leading to the Nederrijn and the IJssel. In Roman times, this was the northern frontier of the empire, the Lower German Limes, and Keeken is one of the sites listed as part of the UNESCO frontier, with traces of Roman military installations along the old river course.
Read the complete Kleve-Keeken write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kleve-Keeken comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tiel Inundation Canal.
Tiel is a river town on the Waal, the main branch of the Rhine in the Netherlands, in the middle of the Betuwe, a region of orchards, dykes and meadows between the Waal and the Lower Rhine. Just outside the town, a wide, straight channel runs through the fields, crossed by bridges and lined by dykes. This is the Tiel inundation canal, built in the late nineteenth century as part of the New Dutch Waterline, the defensive system of controlled flooding that protected the heart of Holland, and it is now part of the UNESCO-listed Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Read the complete Tiel Inundation Canal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 97 km into the recorded legs you reach Tiel Inundation Canal. Next is Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk.
Two layers of Dutch defence history sit on top of each other just south-east of Utrecht. Around two thousand years ago, the Romans built a fort here called Fectio, at the point where a branch of the Rhine met the Vecht, with a harbour for the fleet that patrolled the river frontier. Its remains lie buried in the fields near Vechten and are part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire, Lower German Limes, a World Heritage site since 2021. Close by stands Fort bij Vechten, a nineteenth-century fortress of the New Dutch Waterline, a defensive system that could flood large areas of land to stop an invading army. That system is itself part of the UNESCO site of the Dutch Water Defence Lines. The fort now houses a museum explaining how the waterline worked, and how a country below sea level turned water into a weapon.
Read the complete Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk, about halfway. Next is Works along the IJ before Diemerdam.
Just east of Amsterdam, where the city's suburbs give way to water and polders, a narrow strip of land runs out along the old shore of the IJ and the IJmeer toward Muiden. The Diemerdam is an old dike, and the works along the IJ before it are part of the Dutch Water Defence Lines, the system of forts, dikes, sluices and inundation fields that the Dutch built over centuries to defend their cities by flooding the land around them. The Defence Line of Amsterdam, a ring of forts around the capital, was listed by UNESCO in 1996 and later joined with the New Dutch Waterline into a single site.
Read the complete Works along the IJ before Diemerdam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Works along the IJ before Diemerdam sits at 177 km, about halfway. Next is back through Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk comes up about 222 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Tiel Inundation Canal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tiel Inundation Canal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 257 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Tiel Inundation Canal. Next is back through Kleve-Keeken.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kleve-Keeken write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kleve-Keeken, late in the day. Next is Uedem-Hochwald | Hochwald 12.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Uedem-Hochwald | Hochwald 12 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 354 km.
Uedem-Hochwald | Hochwald 12 → Kleve-Keeken is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kleve-Keeken → Tiel Inundation Canal is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tiel Inundation Canal → Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk → Works along the IJ before Diemerdam is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Works along the IJ before Diemerdam → back through Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Bunnik-Vechten | Marsdijk → back through Tiel Inundation Canal is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tiel Inundation Canal → back through Kleve-Keeken is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kleve-Keeken → Uedem-Hochwald | Hochwald 12 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.