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.
114 km one way from Of - plan on about 2 h 07 of riding. The stops in between: Caykara and Derebasi Turns. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,000 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 about 28 km this is Turkey D915 Derebasi Bends, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Of is a name that sounds like an exclamation, and the town has had its fun with it. It is a busy Black Sea town of about thirty thousand people at the mouth of the Solaklı river, in the province of Trabzon, wedged between a steep green coast and the sea. The hills behind it are covered with tea bushes, hazelnut groves and dense forest, and almost everything is wet, because the eastern Black Sea gets some of the highest rainfall in Turkey.
Read the complete Of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Of is where the day begins. Next is Caykara.
Çaykara means tea stream, which is a fair summary of what you see here. The town sits in a deep valley in the eastern Black Sea mountains of Turkey, in Trabzon province, and the slopes around it are covered with tea bushes in neat green terraces, clinging to hillsides that look too steep for any farmer. The air is damp, the clouds sit low, and the whole country smells of wet earth, woodsmoke and the faint bitter-sweet scent of tea leaves.
Read the complete Çaykara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Caykara comes up about 28 km into the recorded legs. Next is Derebasi Turns.
Some roads exist mainly to show off, and the bends at Derebaşı are one of them. The road climbs the valley wall above the Çaykara stream in a stack of tight hairpins, one on top of another, so that from the top you can look down and see the road you have just ridden folded back and forth through the spruce forest. It is a short stretch, but the density of the bends is remarkable, and motorcyclists who know about it come here deliberately.
Read the complete Derebasi Turns write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 49 km into the recorded legs you reach Derebasi Turns. Next is Bayburt.
Bayburt is a high, dry, windswept city on the upper Çoruh river, and after the green wetness of the Black Sea side it feels like arriving in another country. It sits at roughly fifteen hundred metres, in a plateau landscape of bare brown hills, wheat fields and clear skies, and its thirty thousand residents are used to winters that are long, cold and snowy. A castle dominates the town, a large fortress on a rocky ridge with walls that have been rebuilt many times, by Byzantines, Seljuks and Ottomans, and the view from the ramparts takes in the whole valley.
Read the complete Bayburt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bayburt closes the day.
Of → Caykara is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Caykara → Derebasi Turns is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Derebasi Turns → Bayburt is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.