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 206 km round trip from Alcalá de Henares - roughly 3 h 23 in the saddle. The stops in between: Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, Aranjuez Cultural Landscape and back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Alcalá de Henares has a talent for producing writers. Miguel de Cervantes was born here in 1547, and a house museum in the old town commemorates him. The university, founded by Cardinal Cisneros in 1499, was one of the earliest planned university towns in Europe and a model for institutions in the Americas, and its Renaissance and Baroque buildings, with their stone façades and courtyards, are the core of the UNESCO listing that Alcalá received in 1998 for its university and historic precinct. The Paraninfo, the ceremonial hall, is where the Cervantes Prize is presented each year.
Read the complete University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá is where the day begins. Next is Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro.
Riding into the centre of Madrid is not anyone's idea of a scenic route, but the Paseo del Prado makes up for the traffic. This broad, tree-lined boulevard, laid out in the eighteenth century under Charles III as a showpiece of the Enlightenment, runs from the Cibeles fountain past Neptune to the Atocha station, and along it stand three of the greatest art museums in the world: the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and, a short walk away, the Reina Sofía with Picasso's Guernica. Behind the Prado, the Buen Retiro park spreads over more than a hundred hectares of gardens, lakes and avenues, once the grounds of a royal palace. In 2021 UNESCO listed the ensemble as the Landscape of Light, a recognition of the boulevard and the park as a planned urban landscape devoted to science, art and leisure.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro comes up about 32 km into the recorded legs. Next is Aranjuez Cultural Landscape.
Aranjuez is the green oasis of the dry Madrid plain, a royal town built where the Tagus and the Jarama rivers meet and where Spanish kings came every spring to escape the court. The palace, largely an eighteenth-century Bourbon creation, faces broad avenues and formal gardens, and the riverside parks of the Jardín de la Isla and the Jardín del Príncipe stretch for kilometres along the water, with fountains, statues, an artificial island and tall old trees. In 2001 UNESCO listed the whole thing as a cultural landscape, recognising how the kings shaped nature, agriculture and town planning into a single designed whole.
Read the complete Aranjuez Cultural Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 102 km into the recorded legs you reach Aranjuez Cultural Landscape. Next is back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, late in the day. Next is University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá. That is the ride.
University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá → Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro → Aranjuez Cultural Landscape is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Aranjuez Cultural Landscape → back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro → University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.