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.
175 km from Murrhardt to Murrhardt, about 3 h 15 of riding. The stops in between: Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68, Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau, Building remains south of Götzingen and back through Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau. The line favours views over speed.
The Limes in the Swabian-Franconian Forest has a quality that surprises people who expect Roman walls to follow hills: it runs in a dead-straight line, for kilometres at a stretch, regardless of what stands in the way. Near Murrhardt the line dives through woodland and valleys, and the signposted watchtower sites mark points where a timber and later stone tower stood on the frontier, with a ditch and a palisade or bank beside it. The numbering, with its slash, comes from the nineteenth-century surveyors who first mapped the frontier, and archaeologists still use it.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/100 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 9/100 is where the day begins. Next is Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68.
Between Öhringen and Mainhardt, the Upper German Limes does something a Roman engineer must have been proud of: it runs dead straight for many kilometres, up hill and down dale, ignoring the terrain as if drawn with a ruler on a map. The watchtower sites numbered along this section lie on that line, in the Hohenlohe country of northern Württemberg, between the open farmland around Pfedelbach and the dark wooded hills of the Swabian-Franconian Forest.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 comes up about 31 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau.
Jagsthausen is a village of around fifteen hundred people in the Jagst valley of northern Württemberg, and it punches far above its weight in history. The Romans built a fort here on the Upper German-Raetian Limes, with a civilian settlement and a bath house, part of the UNESCO-listed frontier. But the village is better known for a later resident: Götz von Berlichingen, the knight with the iron hand, who was born in the castle here around 1480. He lost his right hand in battle and had a mechanical one made, led peasants in the war of 1525, and became the hero of a play by Goethe that contains a famously rude line that Germans still quote.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 58 km into the recorded legs you reach Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau. Next is Building remains south of Götzingen.
Between the Odenwald and the Tauber country lies the Bauland, a high, open plateau of limestone, cornfields and small villages that most travellers cross without slowing down. Just south of Götzingen, among fields and woodland edges between Buchen and Osterburken, are the remains of a Roman building on the line of the Upper Germanic Limes. It is not a grand ruin, more a footprint in the ground, but it belongs to one of the best documented stretches of the frontier, the section that runs straight as a ruler through this part of northern Baden-Württemberg.
Read the complete Building remains south of Götzingen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Building remains south of Götzingen, about halfway. Next is back through Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau sits at 105 km, about halfway. Next is back through Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 comes up about 145 km into the recorded legs. Next is Watchtowers WP 9/100.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Watchtowers WP 9/100 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Watchtowers WP 9/100 closes the day.
Watchtowers WP 9/100 → Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 → Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau → Building remains south of Götzingen is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Building remains south of Götzingen → back through Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Jagsthau → back through Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Watchtowers WP 9/36 to 9/68 → Watchtowers WP 9/100 is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.