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 338 km round trip from Biyang - roughly 6 h 38 in the saddle. The stops in between: Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site, Hutian Ancient Kiln Site and back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Xidi is one of the loveliest villages in China, and it sits in a green basin in southern Anhui, forty kilometres or so from the Yellow Mountains. The houses are built in the Huizhou style, with white-plastered walls, grey tiled roofs and tall horse-head gables that stand up like steps against the sky, and carved wooden screens and brick doorways show the wealth of the merchants who built them. UNESCO lists Xidi together with nearby Hongcun as two villages that preserve the look of rural China in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Read the complete Xidi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Xidi is where the day begins. Next is Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site.
The word kaolin comes from Gaoling, a village in the hills north-east of Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi province, where the white clay used in making porcelain was mined for centuries. Porcelain needed two ingredients: kaolin and porcelain stone, a rock that, when crushed and refined, gave the paste its translucency. The hills around Jingdezhen were full of both, and the Changling porcelain stone mining site is one of the places where the stone was quarried, crushed by water-powered hammers and refined into bricks that were carried to the kilns of the porcelain capital of the world.
Read the complete Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site comes up about 107 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hutian Ancient Kiln Site.
Jingdezhen has been making porcelain for more than a thousand years, and the Hutian kiln site is one of the places where that story began to turn into an industry. The kilns here produced fine white and bluish-white ware in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and the heaps of broken shards and the remains of long dragon-shaped kilns show how potters adapted slopes of land to fire great quantities of pots at once. Later, in the Ming dynasty, imperial kilns were established in the town itself, and Jingdezhen became the porcelain capital of China, supplying emperors and, via the sea trade, markets from Japan to Europe.
Read the complete Hutian Ancient Kiln Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 169 km into the recorded legs you reach Hutian Ancient Kiln Site. Next is back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site, late in the day. Next is Xidi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Xidi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Xidi. That is the ride.
Xidi → Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site is 107 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site → Hutian Ancient Kiln Site is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hutian Ancient Kiln Site → back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Changling Porcelain Stone Mining Site → Xidi is 107 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.