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 240 km round trip from Wassu - roughly 5 h 40 in the saddle. It goes by way of Kerbatch, Stone Circles of Senegambia, Wanar and back through Stone Circles of Senegambia. It crosses from Gambia into Senegal - carry ID and check the toll rules.
Wassu stands beside the Gambia River in a country that is a narrow strip of land on either bank of the water, and the stone circles that give it fame belong to a landscape that most people never think about. The circles are rings of laterite pillars, some standing taller than a person, set in a grassy clearing and placed with a precision that suggests careful planning. Archaeologists believe they were burial monuments, raised over about a thousand years from the first millennium BC or soon after, by a society that has left no written records. In 2006, UNESCO listed the circles of Wassu, with those of Kerbatch, Sine Ngayène and Wanar in Senegal, as the Senegambian Stone Circles.
Read the complete Wassu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wassu is where the day begins. Next is Kerbatch.
Stones that nobody can explain are scattered across the Gambian countryside, and Kerbatch has some of them. The stone circles of Senegambia, a World Heritage site since 2006, are a group of more than a thousand megaliths in about thirty circles, set in a band of land along the river Gambia and into Senegal. Each stone is a carved pillar of laterite, a rust-red, iron-rich rock that is cut from the ground when it is soft and hardens in the sun, and they stand in rings of ten to twenty, sometimes with a larger stone set to one side. They were raised between roughly the third century BC and the sixteenth century AD, and they mark burials, some of which have been excavated and found to hold skeletons and grave goods.
Read the complete Kerbatch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kerbatch comes up about 28 km into the recorded legs. Next is Stone Circles of Senegambia.
The Gambia is a thin green country, shaped like a tongue lolling out of Senegal along the river that gives it its name, and its most intriguing monuments are its stones. Near Kerbatch, in the Central River Region, a group of circles of tall laterite pillars stands in open woodland, each circle made of upright stones as tall as a person, shaped by hand and set in a ring. They belong to the stone circles of Senegambia, which spread across the lands on both sides of the border, and number in the thousands, with several different groups listed together as a World Heritage property in 2006. The tradition of putting up such circles seems to have lasted from about the third century BC until the sixteenth century.
Read the complete Stone Circles of Senegambia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 87 km into the recorded legs you reach Stone Circles of Senegambia. Next is Wanar.
The strangest stones in Africa may be the lyre-shaped ones at Wanar. The site, in the Sine-Saloum region of central Senegal, is among the largest groups of megaliths on the continent, with dozens of circles made of tall, rounded laterite pillars, and among them stand a few unusual forked stones, shaped like a lyre or a letter Y, with a notch cut in the top. Archaeologists think they were made by deliberately splitting the stone, and the form seems to echo the shape of a branched tree. Nobody can say for sure what the shape meant, which is part of the appeal. The stones at Wanar form part of the Senegambian stone circles, listed as World Heritage in 2006.
Read the complete Wanar write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wanar, about halfway. Next is back through Stone Circles of Senegambia.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stone Circles of Senegambia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Stone Circles of Senegambia sits at 167 km, about halfway. Next is back through Kerbatch.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kerbatch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kerbatch comes up about 212 km into the recorded legs. Next is Wassu.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Wassu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wassu closes the day.
Wassu → Kerbatch is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kerbatch → Stone Circles of Senegambia is 59 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Stone Circles of Senegambia → Wanar is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wanar → back through Stone Circles of Senegambia is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Stone Circles of Senegambia → back through Kerbatch is 59 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Kerbatch → Wassu is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.