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 357 km round trip from Veldhuizen - roughly 5 h 03 in the saddle. On the way it passes Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden, Schokland and Surroundings and back through Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
This part of the ride is 63 km of Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg → Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden.
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 Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden.
At the mouth of the North Sea Canal, where giant locks let ocean-going ships into the waterway that leads to Amsterdam, a round island fort sits in the middle of the harbour. This is Fort IJmuiden, also called Forteiland, built in the 1880s as the westernmost stronghold of the Defence Line of Amsterdam, a ring of forts, dikes and flood fields designed to protect the capital by inundating the land around it. The Defence Line, now part of the UNESCO-listed Dutch Water Defence Lines, is one of the more ingenious military systems ever devised: rather than walls, it relied on water a few decimetres deep, too shallow for boats and too deep for marching.
Read the complete Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden comes up about 63 km into the recorded legs. Next is Schokland and Surroundings.
Schokland was once an island in the Zuiderzee, a long, narrow strip of peat and clay surrounded by an inland sea that constantly threatened to swallow it. For centuries, its inhabitants lived on raised mounds and fought a losing battle against the water, as storms ate away at the island's edges. By the mid-nineteenth century, life had become so precarious that in 1859 the Dutch government ordered the island to be evacuated. Then, in the twentieth century, the Dutch did something extraordinary: they enclosed the Zuiderzee with a dam, the Afsluitdijk, completed in 1932, and drained large parts of it to create new land. The Noordoostpolder, drained in 1942, swallowed Schokland, and the former island now rises slightly above the surrounding fields, a long green ridge in a flat landscape of farmland. In 1995, Schokland became the first Dutch site to be listed by UNESCO, as a symbol of the Netherlands' heroic struggle against the water.
Read the complete Schokland and Surroundings write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 180 km into the recorded legs you reach Schokland and Surroundings. Next is back through Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden, late in the day. 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.
Back at Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg. That is the ride.
Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg → Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden is 63 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden → Schokland and Surroundings is 117 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Schokland and Surroundings → back through Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden is 115 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Coastal Fort near Ijmuiden → Utrecht-Limes road | Zandweg is 62 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.