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 proper escape from Rome with roads worth waking up for. A 742 km loop that starts and ends near Anzio, about 10 h 08 of riding. It goes by way of Civitavecchia, near Canino and Castelvecchio Calvisio. Marina di Ardea-Tor San Lorenzo is the high point. It tops out at about 1,200 m. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Next is Tuscany Val d’Orcia Overnight high point.
Long before Rome mattered, Ardea was the capital of the Rutuli, the people of Turnus, Aeneas's rival in Virgil's Aeneid. The old town still sits on its tufa outcrop a few kilometres inland. The coast below, Marina di Ardea and Tor San Lorenzo, is something else entirely: a sprawling strip of holiday homes, campsites and beach clubs along a long, straight shore of dark volcanic sand, between Ostia and Anzio.
Read the complete Marina di Ardea-Tor San Lorenzo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Tuscany Val d’Orcia Overnight scenic road.
Trajan built the harbour of Civitavecchia in the second century, and Rome has been using it ever since. Then called Centumcellae, it became the port of the capital, and today it is one of the busiest ports in Italy, with cruise ships, ferries to Sardinia and container ships crowding the docks. The town is not pretty, but it has character, and the old harbour walls still follow Trajan's lines.
Read the complete Civitavecchia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 120 km into the recorded legs you reach Tuscany Val d’Orcia Overnight scenic road. Next is Photo stop near Canino.
Canino is a hill town in the far north-west of Lazio, in the Tuscia, the old land of the Etruscans, close to the border with Tuscany. The landscape around it is gently rolling, covered with olive groves, wheat fields and pastures, and the olive oil of Canino has a protected designation and a reputation as one of the finest in central Italy.
Read the complete Photo stop near Canino write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Photo stop near Canino, about halfway. Next is Rome / Central Italy return.
Castelvecchio Calvisio is a village built as a fortress. Its stone houses are arranged in a tight ellipse on a hilltop, their outer walls forming a continuous defensive ring, with narrow lanes and covered passages inside and only a few gates leading out. From above it looks like a stone egg. It sits on the southern slopes of the Gran Sasso, in a landscape of bare hills, almond trees and high pastures.
Read the complete Castelvecchio Calvisio, on the way back write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rome / Central Italy return sits at 397 km, about halfway. Next is Food stop in Vallecupa.
Food stop in Vallecupa is where this day stops to eat. Next is Tuscany Val d’Orcia Overnight checkpoint 8.
The Tiber does its last bit of meandering here, between the airport at Fiumicino, the exhibition halls of the Fiera di Roma and a scatter of new suburbs at Ponte Galeria and Parco Leonardo. On a map it looks like nothing much, a tangle of motorway junctions on the western fringe of Rome, and on the ground it is mostly that. But it is a very old landscape under the concrete, and if you have ridden down from the Val d'Orcia, it is worth knowing what you are arriving into.
Read the complete Near La Massimina-Casal Lumbroso write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tuscany Val d’Orcia Overnight checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is Back to Tuscany Val.
Anzio and Nettuno are twin towns on the Lazio coast, about fifty kilometres south of Rome, sharing a beach, a harbour and a great deal of history. The Roman emperor Nero was born in Antium, as Anzio was known, and the ruins of the imperial villa survive on the cliff above the sea, with a grotto and a sweep of brickwork. In the twentieth century the place was in the news in a different way. In January 1944, Allied forces landed here in Operation Shingle, hoping to outflank the German lines at Cassino and race to Rome, and instead found themselves pinned to the beachhead for months in hard fighting.
Read the complete Tuscany Val write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to Tuscany Val. That is the ride.
This Photo stop near Canino → Castelvecchio Calvisio, on the way back stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.
Food stop in Vallecupa → Near La Massimina-Casal Lumbroso is the logistics leg. Watch junctions, villages and speed changes, then let the roadbook do its job: move you out of the clutter without spending your best attention too early.