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 Anógeia it runs 174 km to Anógeia; allow about 2 h 57 of riding. The stops in between: Knossos, Malia and back through Knossos. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Zominthos is a mountain meadow on the north-eastern shoulder of Mount Psiloritis, or Ida, the highest peak in Crete at 2,456 metres, and at about twelve hundred metres altitude it is cool, green and silent even in August. It was the site of a Minoan settlement, a large two-storey building of the middle Bronze Age, excavated from 1982 by the archaeologist Yiannis Sakellarakis, and the stone walls and rooms still stand among the grass. It was probably a way station on the path to the sacred Idaean Cave, where legend says the infant Zeus was hidden from his father Kronos and raised by nymphs and goats. A pilgrim route ran through here for thousands of years.
Read the complete Zominthos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zominthos is where the day begins. Next is Knossos.
Five kilometres south of Heraklion, on a low hill above the Kairatos stream, lie the ruins that gave Europe its oldest legend of a labyrinth. Knossos was the greatest centre of Minoan Crete, a sprawling palace complex of courtyards, storerooms, staircases and shrines that flourished in the second millennium BC. Its confusing plan, with hundreds of interlocking rooms on several levels, may well have inspired the Greek myth of King Minos, the craftsman Daedalus and the Minotaur imprisoned in the maze, waiting for Theseus.
Read the complete Knossos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Knossos comes up about 45 km into the recorded legs. Next is Malia.
Mália is two things in Crete at once: a beach resort known for loud nights, and the site of a Minoan palace that is nearly four thousand years old. The first palace was built around 1900 BC, destroyed by an earthquake or invaders, rebuilt about 1650 BC and then destroyed again around 1450 BC, the same wave of disasters that ended Minoan power across the island. It was excavated by French archaeologists from the 1920s, after a local scholar, Joseph Hatzidakis, had begun work in 1915. It is the third in size of Crete's great palaces, after Knossos and Phaistos.
Read the complete Malia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 87 km into the recorded legs you reach Malia. Next is back through Knossos.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Knossos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Knossos, late in the day. Next is Zominthos.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zominthos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Zominthos. That is the ride.
Zominthos → Knossos is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Knossos → Malia is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mália → back through Knossos is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Knossos → Zominthos is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.