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.
507 km from Ercolano to Ercolano, about 9 h 42 of riding. On the way it passes Costiera Amalfitana, Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region, Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w and Capo Palinuro. 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 53 km this is Amalfi Coast Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The Villa of the Papyri is mostly still buried. It was a huge seaside villa at Herculaneum, on the slope below Vesuvius, and when the eruption of 79 AD sent a mud and ash flow down on the town, the villa was covered by twenty metres of hard volcanic rock. In the 1750s, the Bourbon engineers who were digging in the area tunnelled down and found marble statues, bronzes of rare quality and a library of around 1,800 papyrus scrolls, charred into black lumps by the heat. The scrolls, many of them works by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, have been read in recent years using X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence. The villa may have belonged to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Piso, though this is a guess. The villa in Malibu that houses the Getty Museum is a copy of it.
Read the complete Villa dei Papiri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa dei Papiri is where the day begins. Next is Costiera Amalfitana.
The Amalfi coast road is the reason many riders first dreamed of Italy, and it lives up to the legend and then some, with a few catches. The SS163 Amalfitana, carved into the cliffs above the sea in the nineteenth century, winds along the southern side of the Sorrento peninsula from Positano to Vietri sul Mare, with hundreds of bends, sheer drops, tunnels, bridges and villages clinging to the rocks. Amalfi itself, a small town of about five thousand people at the mouth of a ravine, was once a powerful maritime republic that rivalled Venice and Genoa in the Middle Ages, and its cathedral, with its striped facade and Arab-Norman cloister, is a reminder of that glory.
Read the complete Costiera Amalfitana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Costiera Amalfitana comes up about 53 km into the recorded legs. Next is Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region.
According to legend, the siren Leucosia threw herself into the sea here after failing to lure Odysseus to his doom, and her body became the little island off Punta Licosa. It is a fine story for a fine place. Punta Licosa is a low, wild headland on the coast of the Cilento, south of Salerno, covered in Mediterranean scrub, pines and holm oaks, with rocky coves and clear water, and it forms part of the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, listed by UNESCO in 1998 as a cultural landscape. Behind it rises Monte Stella, the mountain that gives its name to the surrounding hills, dotted with small villages and terraced olive groves.
Read the complete Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 149 km into the recorded legs you reach Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region. Next is Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w.
South of Salerno, past the temples of Paestum, the coast bends out into a great knuckle of mountains, and inland from the beaches the Cilento national park climbs into wooded massifs that most visitors never see. The park, together with Paestum, ancient Velia and the Certosa di Padula, is a World Heritage Site, recognised as a cultural landscape shaped by Greek colonists, Lucanian tribes and long monastic tradition.
Read the complete Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w, about halfway. Next is Capo Palinuro.
The cape itself, a rocky headland full of sea caves, lies some way west around the coast, past Marina di Camerota, and both belong to the same wild southern end of the Cilento. The name comes from Virgil: Palinurus was the helmsman of Aeneas, who fell asleep at the tiller, tumbled overboard and washed up on this shore, where he was killed by the locals. His ghost, in the Aeneid, asks for a proper burial, and the cape was named for him.
Read the complete Capo Palinuro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Capo Palinuro sits at 185 km, about halfway. Next is back through Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w comes up about 300 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 356 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region. Next is back through Costiera Amalfitana.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Costiera Amalfitana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Costiera Amalfitana, late in the day. Next is Villa dei Papiri.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa dei Papiri write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 507 km.
Villa dei Papiri → Costiera Amalfitana is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Costiera Amalfitana → Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region is 96 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region → Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w → Capo Palinuro is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Capo Palinuro → back through Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park w → back through Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Punta Licosa and the Mount Stella region → back through Costiera Amalfitana is 97 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Costiera Amalfitana → Villa dei Papiri is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.