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 99 km round trip from Bad Ems - roughly 1 h 42 in the saddle. The stops in between: Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16, Fortlets and site of the fort and civil se and back through Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 24 km this is Moselle Wine Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Bad Ems is a small spa town in the winding valley of the Lahn, where the river cuts a deep trench through the hills of the Taunus and Westerwald. Its warm springs were known to the Romans, and it gained fame in the nineteenth century, when the Russian tsar, the Prussian king and the whole of European society came to take the cure. In July 1870 King Wilhelm of Prussia was walking on the promenade when the French ambassador approached him, and the telegram that described the encounter, edited by Bismarck for the press, helped push France into the war that led to German unification. The Ems Dispatch, as it is called, is one of the famous editorial acts in diplomatic history.
Read the complete Watchtower WP 1/84 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtower WP 1/84 is where the day begins. Next is Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16.
Imagine standing in a small timber or stone tower on a cold winter night, looking out over the dark forest for signs of movement, with a fire ready to signal to the next tower along the line. That was the life of the soldiers who manned the watchtowers of the Roman frontier, and the remains of three of them, numbered 2/14 to 2/16 by archaeologists, lie in the woods between Singhofen and Miehlen, on the plateau above the Rhine and the Lahn. Their foundations survive as low mounds and traces in the ground, and the line of the frontier, the ditch and bank, can be followed between them. They are part of the Upper German-Raetian Limes, one of the components of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16 comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fortlets and site of the fort and civil se.
The western Taunus is wonderfully empty. Away from the commuter belt around Frankfurt and Wiesbaden, the hills north of Bad Schwalbach turn into a quiet patchwork of forest, small meadows and villages in the Heidenrod municipality, and right through the middle runs the Limes. Today you find grassy outlines, a few markers and the bank and ditch disappearing into the beech woods.
Read the complete Fortlets and site of the fort and civil se write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 49 km into the recorded legs you reach Fortlets and site of the fort and civil se. Next is back through Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16, late in the day. Next is Watchtower WP 1/84.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtower WP 1/84 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Watchtower WP 1/84. That is the ride.
Watchtower WP 1/84 → Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16 is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16 → Fortlets and site of the fort and civil se is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fortlets and site of the fort and civil se → back through Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16 is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Watchtowers WP 2/14 to 2/16 → Watchtower WP 1/84 is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.