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 192 km round trip from Veldhuizen - roughly 3 h 16 in the saddle. It goes by way of Fort Werk IV, Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams, Droogmakerij de Beemster and back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Two thousand years ago the Rhine marked the northern edge of the Roman Empire here, and along its southern bank the army built a chain of forts, watchtowers and a road to link them. In the western suburbs of Utrecht, in the new district of Leidsche Rijn and the old village of De Meern, that road has been found again under the fields, a gravel and clay embankment with ditches either side, and part of it can be traced along the street called Zandweg. Nearby, at Castellum Hoge Woerd, the outline of a Roman fort has been rebuilt in a modern form, with a museum, a theatre and an observatory, and a flat-bottomed Roman river barge, found here in 1997 almost intact and complete with the cargo and personal belongings of its skipper, is on display. The Lower German Limes became a World Heritage site in 2021.
Read the complete Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg is where the day begins. Next is Fort Werk IV.
The Gooi, the area east of Amsterdam around Bussum, Naarden and Hilversum, is one of the few places in the western Netherlands with hills, if you can call low sandy ridges hills. It is a region of heathland, woods and wealthy villages. On the edge of Bussum, close to the fortified town of Naarden, stands Fort Werk IV, a small fortification that was part of the New Dutch Waterline and the Defence Line of Amsterdam, and is now part of the UNESCO-listed Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Read the complete Fort Werk IV write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort Werk IV comes up about 37 km into the recorded legs. Next is Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams.
Nobody rides a motorbike into the Amsterdam canal ring for the curves. You come because in the early seventeenth century, the city at the height of its Golden Age planned an extension of startling ambition: three main canals, the Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, laid out in concentric arcs around the medieval core, lined with tall, narrow merchants' houses with gabled roofs and hoisting beams. Work began in 1613, and the result, a UNESCO site since 2010, is still one of the most admired examples of urban planning in the world.
Read the complete Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 65 km into the recorded legs you reach Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams. Next is Droogmakerij de Beemster.
In 1612 a lake north of Amsterdam disappeared. Wealthy merchants, flush with money from the Dutch trading boom, financed the draining of the Beemster, and the engineer Jan Adriaenszoon Leeghwater used dozens of windmills to pump the water out into a ring canal. What remained was a polder several metres below sea level, laid out in a perfectly regular grid of roads, canals and fields based on Renaissance ideas of order and proportion. The Beemster was inscribed by UNESCO in 1999 as a masterpiece of creative planning, and from above it looks like a ruled sheet of paper.
Read the complete Droogmakerij de Beemster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Droogmakerij de Beemster, about halfway. Next is back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams sits at 119 km, about halfway. Next is back through Fort Werk IV.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort Werk IV write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fort Werk IV comes up about 156 km into the recorded legs. Next is Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg closes the day.
Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg → Fort Werk IV is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort Werk IV → Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → Droogmakerij de Beemster is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Droogmakerij de Beemster → back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Seventeenth-Century Canal Ring Area of Ams → back through Fort Werk IV is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort Werk IV → Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.