CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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 one-way ride of 97 km, Mecca to Ta’if - roughly 1 h 29 in the saddle. The stops in between: Al Hada hairpins and Al Hada. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,750 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 3 km this is Saudi Taif Al Hada Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
This one needs a plain word before anything else. Mecca is the holiest city in Islam, and the area around it, the sacred territory known as the Haram, is closed to non-Muslims. Road signs mark the points where non-Muslim traffic is directed to bypass roads, and the rules are enforced at checkpoints. If you are not Muslim, plan to start your ride from the Taif side or well outside the boundary, and look carefully at where the signed limits run before you go anywhere near here.
Read the complete Mecca outskirts write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mecca outskirts is where the day begins. Next is Al Hada hairpins.
The road from Ta'if to Al Hada is a short ride that does an enormous amount, because it is one big drop. The Sarawat escarpment runs down the western side of Arabia like a stair, and the road plunges off it in a stack of tight hairpins, falling toward the hot lowland that leads to Mecca. Bends follow one another so fast that you barely have time to look at the view, and on a motorcycle the sequence is a joy: sharp, well-surfaced and well-banked, with walls of rock above and the plain hundreds of metres below.
Read the complete Al Hada hairpins write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Al Hada hairpins comes up 37 km in. Next is Al Hada.
Al Hada sits right on the lip of the escarpment, a small town of a few thousand people perched at the top of the great drop to the Tihama plain, and it has the feel of a place that knows the view is its fortune. From the terraces and viewpoints the land falls away in rocky folds toward a hazy plain, and on a clear day the haze gives way to a long reach of the lowlands. The air is cooler than in the cities, and the sense of being above the rest of Arabia is real.
Read the complete Al Hadā write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
73 km in you reach Al Hada. Next is Taif.
Taif is the cool lung of Saudi Arabia, a city of half a million set on the crest of the Sarawat mountains at something like eighteen hundred metres. After the furnace of the Red Sea lowlands the first lungful of air here is a small shock, and in winter the nights can really bite. For centuries the town has been the place where Hejazi families went to escape the summer, and the royal court still moves up here in the hot months.
Read the complete Taif write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Taif closes the day.
Mecca outskirts → Al Hada hairpins is 68 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Al Hada → Taif is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.