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 Erlensee it runs 87 km to Erlensee; allow about 1 h 15 of riding. It goes by way of Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl, Fortsite and civil settlement of Echzell and back through Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 20 km this is German Fairy Tale Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Between Hanau and the river Main, the plain is flat, fertile and dense with small towns, and it hardly looks like a frontier. Yet around the year 100 the Romans ran their Upper Germanic Limes down this way to meet the Main near Großkrotzenburg, with a palisade, ditch and a line of wooden watchtowers set at intervals of a few hundred metres. The towers on the maps are labelled by section and number, and WP 5/11 and 5/12 are two of them, neighbours in a long chain that once stretched across Germany for hundreds of kilometres.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 5/11 to 5/12 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 5/11 to 5/12 is where the day begins. Next is Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl.
Out here on the eastern rim of the Wetterau, between Altenstadt, Hammersbach and the Büdingen forest, the Roman frontier did something unusual. Having come over the Taunus and swung north around the fertile plain, the Limes turned and ran almost due south towards the Main, enclosing the Wetterau like a hand cupped around something precious. The towers numbered WP 4/82 to 5/8, along with small fortlets, guarded this eastern flank, and their remains lie in fields and woodland edges where only a shallow bank or a marker stone gives them away.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl comes up about 20 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fortsite and civil settlement of Echzell.
Echzell is a village of a few thousand people in the Wetterau, the broad, fertile basin north-east of Frankfurt, where loess soil has been farmed since the Stone Age and the horizon rarely rises above a gentle swell. The Romans liked it for exactly that reason. They built a fort at Echzell in the later first century as part of their push into the Wetterau, and a civil settlement grew up around it in the usual way, with traders, craftsmen and families outside the gates. The fort later became part of the Upper German-Raetian Limes, which UNESCO listed in 2005. Almost nothing of the walls stands now, and the outline lies mostly under fields and houses, so the Echzell stop is about reading a landscape rather than visiting a monument.
Read the complete Fortsite and civil settlement of Echzell write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 42 km into the recorded legs you reach Fortsite and civil settlement of Echzell. Next is back through Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl, late in the day. Next is Watchtowers WP 5/11 to 5/12.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 5/11 to 5/12 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Watchtowers WP 5/11 to 5/12. That is the ride.
Watchtowers WP 5/11 to 5/12 → Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl → Fortsite and civil settlement of Echzell is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fortsite and civil settlement of Echzell → back through Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Watchtowers WP 4/82 to 5/8 including fortl → Watchtowers WP 5/11 to 5/12 is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.