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.
From Echzell it runs 74 km to Echzell; allow about 1 h 05 of riding. It goes by way of Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57, Fort Schrenzer and back through Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
A Roman watchtower on the Limes was, in essence, a lookout with a roof. The stone ones were about five metres square and perhaps ten metres high, with a ground floor for storage, an upper room for a handful of soldiers, and a wooden gallery with a window or a balcony from which a lamp, a horn or a flag could be used to signal. Where the tower stood, a small patch of ground was cleared, with a ditch around it, and the garrison lived in the tower itself or in a nearby hut. Number 4/81 stands in Hesse, in the Wetterau, between Echzell and the village of Hungen, in a landscape of farmland and low volcanic hills.
Read the complete Watchtower WP 4/81 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtower WP 4/81 is where the day begins. Next is Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57.
The Wetterau is the broad, fertile plain north of Frankfurt, between the Taunus and the Vogelsberg, and the Romans considered it so valuable that they bent their frontier around it to include it in the empire. The Limes ran along the northern edge of the plain, and the watchtowers numbered WP 4/53 to 4/57, near the town of Lich, stood on this section, part of the Upper Germanic-Raetian Limes listed by UNESCO in 2005. Like most watchtowers, they survive only as mounds or traces in the fields and forest, but the line of the frontier can be followed on foot or by bicycle.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57 comes up about 20 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fort Schrenzer.
Butzbach sits at the northern edge of the Wetterau, a broad, fertile plain north of Frankfurt, where the Taunus ends and the land opens out into fields of wheat, sugar beet and rapeseed. The Romans prized this land, and their frontier made a long detour around it, swinging east and then south to include the Wetterau within the empire. Near Butzbach, on the Schrenzer hill, they built a small fort, the Kastell Schrenzer, to guard the frontier where it left the Taunus and began its loop around the plain. The fort and the frontier nearby are part of the frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage site, and the remains, low earthworks in the woods, can be visited on foot.
Read the complete Fort Schrenzer write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 36 km into the recorded legs you reach Fort Schrenzer. Next is back through Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57, late in the day. Next is Watchtower WP 4/81.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtower WP 4/81 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Watchtower WP 4/81. That is the ride.
Watchtower WP 4/81 → Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57 is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57 → Fort Schrenzer is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort Schrenzer → back through Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57 is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Watchtowers WP 4/53 to 4/57 → Watchtower WP 4/81 is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.