CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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From Butzbach it runs 363 km to Butzbach; allow about 5 h 14 of riding. It goes by way of Watchtower WP 3/42*, Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz, Exhibition grounds 1904 and Ruine Altenmuster. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Near Butzbach the Wetterau starts to break against the Taunus, and the Roman frontier passes through that transition with a long series of numbered watchtowers, in this case 4/20 to 4/36. It is a longer run than most, and it reflects how carefully the Romans watched this side of the line, where the open plain makes a natural highway for anyone coming from the north. The Upper German-Raetian Limes, listed by UNESCO in 2005, crosses farmland here, and in places the old rampart survives as a low bank in a meadow edge or a stretch of forest.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 4/20 to 4/36 including the write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 4/20 to 4/36 including the is where the day begins. Next is Watchtower WP 3/42*.
Glashütten takes its name from the glass huts that worked in these forests in the Middle Ages, when the endless beech and oak of the high Taunus supplied fuel for the furnaces and potash for the glass. Today it is a quiet village spread over a saddle below the Großer Feldberg, at around 880 metres the highest summit in the Taunus, and the Roman frontier passes right by it. Watchtower 3/42 stood on this stretch of the Limes, where the bank and ditch run through the forest along the ridge; near the Feldberg summit, the remains of a small Roman fort, the Feldbergkastell, show where a garrison guarded a pass through the mountains.
Read the complete Watchtower WP 3/42* write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtower WP 3/42* comes up 38 km in. Next is Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz.
Some of the gravestones on the sandy rise known in Mainz as the Judensand are close to a thousand years old. The oldest dated stone here goes back to the middle of the eleventh century, which makes this one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Europe. Together with sites in Speyer and Worms, Mainz formed the ShUM communities, centres of learning on the Rhine whose scholars shaped Ashkenazi Judaism for centuries, and in 2021 the three were listed together as a World Heritage Site. Mainz was Magenza in Hebrew, home to rabbis whose rulings were followed far beyond the Rhineland.
Read the complete Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
75 km in you reach Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz. Next is Exhibition grounds 1904.
In 1899, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse invited a group of young artists and architects to Darmstadt and gave them a hill to build on. The Mathildenhöhe became an artists' colony and a showcase for Jugendstil, the German Art Nouveau, with studios, houses and exhibitions designed as total works of art, down to the cutlery. Behind it lay a simple idea: that art should shape everyday life, from the house to the chair to the wallpaper. The exhibitions of 1901, 1904, 1908 and 1914 drew visitors from all over Europe, and the ensemble was inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2021.
Read the complete Exhibition grounds 1904 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Exhibition grounds 1904, about halfway. Next is Ruine Altenmuster.
Lorsch Abbey, founded in the eighth century, became one of the most powerful monasteries of the Carolingian empire, with vast estates, a famous library and the patronage of Charlemagne himself. Its first home, however, was not on the site of the later abbey, but a short distance away, on an island in the Weschnitz river, a place known as Altenmünster, the old minster. The ruins of that first foundation, a few low walls in a meadow, are a quiet counterpoint to the abbey's most famous building, the Torhalle, a gatehouse with a façade of red and white stone panels, one of the few surviving examples of Carolingian architecture. The abbey and Altenmünster together have been on the UNESCO list since 1991.
Read the complete Ruine Altenmuster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ruine Altenmuster sits at 150 km, about halfway. Next is back through Exhibition grounds 1904.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Exhibition grounds 1904 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Exhibition grounds 1904 comes up 188 km in. Next is back through Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
225 km in you reach back through Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz. Next is back through Watchtower WP 3/42*.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtower WP 3/42* write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Watchtower WP 3/42*, late in the day. Next is Watchtowers WP 4/20 to 4/36 including the.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 4/20 to 4/36 including the write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 363 km.
Watchtowers WP 4/20 to 4/36 including the → Watchtower WP 3/42* is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtower WP 3/42* → Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz → Exhibition grounds 1904 is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Exhibition grounds 1904 → Ruine Altenmuster is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ruine Altenmuster → back through Exhibition grounds 1904 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Exhibition grounds 1904 → back through Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Old Jewish Cemetery Mainz → back through Watchtower WP 3/42* is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Watchtower WP 3/42* → Watchtowers WP 4/20 to 4/36 including the is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.