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 312 km round trip from Garmisch-Partenkirchen - roughly 4 h 38 in the saddle. The stops in between: Rose Island, Unfriedshausen, Pestenacker and Water Management System of Augsburg. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,550 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 33 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen lies in a wide Alpine valley in Bavaria, close to the Austrian border, with the Wetterstein range rising behind it and the Zugspitze, at 2,962 metres the highest mountain in Germany, standing at the end of the valley. The town is really two, Garmisch and Partenkirchen, joined together for the 1936 Winter Olympics, and each still has its own character. Partenkirchen, the older part, has a Roman history, as it stood on the road across the Alps, and its main street, with painted houses, is the more charming.
Read the complete Garmisch-Partenkirchen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen is where the day begins. Next is Rose Island.
Lake Starnberg, south-west of Munich, is the lake where Bavaria's Fairy Tale King met his end. Ludwig II drowned in its waters near Berg in 1886, in circumstances that are still debated, and a cross stands in the lake where his body was found. On the opposite shore, near Feldafing, lies the small Roseninsel, or Rose Island, the only island in the lake. Ludwig's father Maximilian II had a little villa built there, surrounded by a rose garden, and Ludwig used it as a retreat, sometimes meeting his cousin, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as Sisi, who spent her childhood at nearby Possenhofen.
Read the complete Rose Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rose Island comes up about 66 km into the recorded legs. Next is Unfriedshausen.
Unfriedshausen is a hamlet in the rolling farmland west of the Ammersee, part of the municipality of Geltendorf in the Landsberg district of Bavaria, and if you have never heard of it, you are in good company. This is the gentle, prosperous countryside between Munich and Augsburg, a patchwork of fields, meadows, spruce woods, onion-domed churches and farmhouses with balconies full of geraniums, and it is the kind of place where the main event of the day might be a tractor crossing the road.
Read the complete Unfriedshausen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
At least about 120 km into the recorded legs you reach Unfriedshausen. Next is Pestenacker.
Pestenacker is a field in Bavaria with a secret under it. Around five and a half thousand years ago, Neolithic farmers built a settlement on the damp ground near the Lech, and the waterlogged soil preserved timber, tools and household remains that would have rotted elsewhere. It belongs to the family of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, inscribed by UNESCO in 2011, a group that also includes the Roseninsel in Lake Starnberg to the south. What you see at the surface is modest, since most of the evidence is below ground, so the interest here lies in imagining.
Read the complete Pestenacker write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pestenacker, about halfway. Next is Water Management System of Augsburg.
Augsburg was a Roman town, a medieval free imperial city and the home of the fabulously rich Fugger banking family, but the thing that held it all together was water. Over the centuries, the city built an intricate network of canals fed by the Lech and Wertach rivers, water towers, pumping stations and fountains, supplying clean drinking water to the citizens and power to mills and workshops. The system was so advanced that UNESCO inscribed it in 2019, recognising twenty-two sites, from the water towers at the Red Gate, dating back to the fifteenth century, to the great Renaissance fountains dedicated to Augustus, Mercury and Hercules on the main street.
Read the complete Water Management System of Augsburg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Water Management System of Augsburg sits at 152 km, about halfway. Next is back through Pestenacker.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pestenacker write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pestenacker comes up about 192 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Unfriedshausen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Unfriedshausen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 193 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Unfriedshausen. Next is back through Rose Island.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rose Island write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Rose Island, late in the day. Next is Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Garmisch-Partenkirchen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 312 km.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen → Rose Island is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Rose Island → Unfriedshausen is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pestenacker → Water Management System of Augsburg is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Water Management System of Augsburg → back through Pestenacker is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Unfriedshausen → back through Rose Island is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Rose Island → Garmisch-Partenkirchen is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.