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.
508 km from Chamonix-Mont-Blanc to Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, about 7 h 41 of riding. It goes by way of Le Crêt de Chatillon, Secteur des Mongets, The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier and Petite villa au bord du lac Léman. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from France into Switzerland - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
For about 110 km this is Route des Grandes Alpes, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 1 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go. Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
Mont Blanc does not so much loom over Chamonix as lean on it. The valley is a deep, narrow trench of the Arve river with the highest peak in the Alps, just under 4,810 metres, standing right at the top of it, and the glaciers come down so close that you can see the cracks in the ice from the main street. Modern mountaineering has a birthday here. In 1786 two local men, Jacques Balmat and Michel Paccard, reached the summit for the first time, and the town has been selling the idea of going up high ever since. In 1924 it also hosted the first Winter Olympics.
Read the complete Chamonix write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chamonix is where the day begins. Next is Le Crêt de Chatillon.
The Crêt de Châtillon is the summit of the Semnoz, the long wooded mountain that rises above the western shore of Lake Annecy, and from the top, at around 1,700 metres, the view on a clear day is one of the finest in the French Alps: the whole lake below, the Bauges and the Aravis around, and, to the east, Mont Blanc in all its glory. Sites with names like Châtillon and Les Mongets along this shore preserve the remains of villages built on the edge of the lake thousands of years ago.
Read the complete Le Crêt de Chatillon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Le Crêt de Chatillon comes up about 110 km into the recorded legs. Next is Secteur des Mongets.
Sevrier, on the western shore of Lake Annecy, is home to an unusual industry: bells. The Paccard foundry, which has been casting bells since the late eighteenth century and moved to Sevrier in the 1980s, has made bells for churches and carillons all over the world, and its museum explains how they are designed, cast and tuned. It is a curious contrast to the quiet lakeshore just below the village, where the Secteur des Mongets marks the remains of a prehistoric village built on the edge of the lake, now under water. It is one of the sites included in the World Heritage listing of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, and divers have found wooden piles, pottery and tools in the lake bed.
Read the complete Secteur des Mongets write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 112 km into the recorded legs you reach Secteur des Mongets. Next is The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier.
On the shore of Lake Geneva at Corseaux, just west of Vevey, stands a low white house, long and narrow, with a single strip window running along its lakeside facade. It looks modest, almost plain, but it is one of the key buildings of modern architecture. Le Corbusier, born in La Chaux-de-Fonds in the Swiss Jura, designed it in the early 1920s for his parents, and the Villa Le Lac, also called the Petite Maison, was an early demonstration of his ideas: a ribbon window framing the view, a roof garden, an open plan. Since 2016 it has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, which includes seventeen sites in seven countries.
Read the complete The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, about halfway. Next is Petite villa au bord du lac Léman.
In the 1920s Le Corbusier built a house for his parents on the shore of Lake Geneva, and he called it, a little ruefully, the little house, la petite maison. It stands at Corseaux, just east of Vevey, and it is tiny, only about sixty square metres of living space on a strip of garden between the railway and the water. The design is a manifesto in small. A single long window frames the lake and the mountains of Savoy like a painting, the garden wall has a table and a window cut into it, and every cupboard and corner has a purpose. His mother lived there into her nineties, and he wrote a little book about it. The house is part of the UNESCO listing of his works, and it can be visited in the season, with timed guided tours.
Read the complete Petite villa au bord du lac Léman write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Petite villa au bord du lac Léman sits at 193 km, about halfway. Next is back through The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier comes up about 258 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Secteur des Mongets.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Secteur des Mongets write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 405 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Secteur des Mongets. Next is back through Le Crêt de Chatillon.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Le Crêt de Chatillon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Le Crêt de Chatillon, late in the day. Next is Chamonix.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chamonix write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 508 km.
Chamonix → Le Crêt de Chatillon is 110 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Secteur des Mongets → The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier is 144 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier → back through Secteur des Mongets is 147 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Le Crêt de Chatillon → Chamonix is 103 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.