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.
263 km from Utrecht to Utrecht, about 3 h 54 of riding. On the way it passes Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk, Dutch Water Defence Lines and back through Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 71 km this is Dutch Flower Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Dig under the Domplein in Utrecht and you hit a Roman fort. That is not a figure of speech: when the city was rebuilt after the great storm that brought down the nave of the cathedral in 1674, the foundations were already sitting on the foundations of something much older. The Romans built a fort here around the middle of the first century, on a low sandy rise beside the Rhine, and called it Traiectum, the crossing. When the legions left, the name stuck, and a thousand years of sound changes turned it into Utrecht.
Read the complete Utrecht-Domplein write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Utrecht-Domplein is where the day begins. Next is Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk.
The Vliet, a calm green waterway running between Leiden and The Hague, looks like any other Dutch canal, lined with reeds, cyclists and the occasional houseboat. But it follows, more or less, the route of one of the oldest canals in Western Europe. In about AD 47, the Roman general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo ordered his soldiers to dig a canal linking the Rhine and the Meuse estuaries, so that boats could move supplies along the coast without risking the North Sea. The historian Tacitus says Corbulo did it partly to keep his troops busy. Traces of the Fossa Corbulonis have been found here at Vlietwijk, near Voorschoten, and the site is part of the Lower German Limes World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2021.
Read the complete Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk comes up about 59 km into the recorded legs. Next is Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Forget mountains and passes: the Dutch defended Amsterdam with water. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, the army built a ring of forts around the capital at a distance of roughly fifteen to twenty kilometres, the Stelling van Amsterdam, designed to flood the surrounding polders to a depth too shallow for boats but too deep to wade through. Forty-odd forts, along with dykes, sluices and batteries, formed the ring, and the area north of the city near De Rijp and the Beemster was part of it. The Defence Line of Amsterdam gained World Heritage status in 1996, and in 2021 it was extended to include the older New Dutch Waterline further south, the whole now known as the Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Read the complete Dutch Water Defence Lines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 130 km into the recorded legs you reach Dutch Water Defence Lines. Next is back through Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk, late in the day. Next is Utrecht-Domplein.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Utrecht-Domplein write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Utrecht-Domplein. That is the ride.
Utrecht-Domplein → Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk → Dutch Water Defence Lines is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Dutch Water Defence Lines → back through Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk → Utrecht-Domplein is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.