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 285 km round trip from Hoge Mors - roughly 3 h 53 in the saddle. The stops in between: Works along the IJ before Durgerdam, Schokland and Surroundings and back through Works along the IJ before Durgerdam. The line favours views over speed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 61 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
For a few hundred years, the mouth of the Rhine was the edge of the world. West of Leiden, the river that once spilled into the North Sea along the Old Rhine channel marked the frontier of the Roman Empire, and the legions kept a line of forts along its banks. Valkenburg, a small village near the coast north of The Hague, was one of them, and the site of a fort known by the name Praetorium Agrippinae, which is the Roman name that archaeologists give to the Valkenburg fort. It sat on the south bank of the river, with a harbour, a bridge or two, and a settlement of traders and soldiers around it, and the finds from the area include timbers, shoes, and tools preserved in the damp clay.
Read the complete Valkenburg-De Woerd | South write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Valkenburg-De Woerd | South is where the day begins. Next is Works along the IJ before Durgerdam.
East of Amsterdam, where the IJ widens into the IJmeer and the city gives way to water and sky, the old dike village of Durgerdam sits on a strip of land between the sea wall and the polders. Its wooden houses, painted in strong colours and leaning on each other along the dike, look out over a lake that was once the Zuiderzee, open to the North Sea until the Afsluitdijk closed it in 1932. The works along the IJ here belong to the Defence Line of Amsterdam, now part of the Dutch Water Defence Lines World Heritage Site.
Read the complete Works along the IJ before Durgerdam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Works along the IJ before Durgerdam comes up about 57 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 144 km into the recorded legs you reach Schokland and Surroundings. Next is back through Works along the IJ before Durgerdam.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Works along the IJ before Durgerdam write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Works along the IJ before Durgerdam, late in the day. Next is Valkenburg-De Woerd | South.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Valkenburg-De Woerd | South write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Valkenburg-De Woerd | South. That is the ride.
Valkenburg-De Woerd | South → Works along the IJ before Durgerdam is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Works along the IJ before Durgerdam → Schokland and Surroundings is 87 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Schokland and Surroundings → back through Works along the IJ before Durgerdam is 85 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Works along the IJ before Durgerdam → Valkenburg-De Woerd | South is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.