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 575 km round trip from Zermatt - roughly 10 h 47 in the saddle. It goes by way of Sacro Monte Calvario, Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal, Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine and Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,700 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Switzerland into Italy - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
The Matterhorn has the most recognisable shape of any mountain on Earth, and Zermatt sits at its feet, gazing up. It is a village of about six and a half thousand in the upper Mattertal, at 1,600 metres, hemmed in by 4,000-metre peaks, and it is the one resort in Switzerland where the main streets are quiet because petrol vehicles are banned. Small electric taxis and carts hum along the lanes, and the air smells of woodsmoke, pine and horses.
Read the complete Zermatt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zermatt is where the day begins. Next is Sacro Monte Calvario.
Domodossola's holy mountain rises immediately above the town, on the wooded Mattarella hill, and the walk or ride up gives you the whole Ossola valley at your feet. The Sacro Monte Calvario was begun in the seventeenth century as a devotional path of chapels depicting the Passion of Christ, each holding painted and sculpted scenes, leading up to a sanctuary church at the top. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy inscribed together on the UNESCO list, and it has a particular link with Antonio Rosmini, the philosopher-priest who founded his religious institute here in the nineteenth century.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte Calvario comes up about 88 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Varallo is a small town at the point where the Valsesia stops being a wide valley and starts becoming a mountain one, and above it, on a rocky spur reached by a winding road or a short cable car, is the oldest and most ambitious of the Sacri Monti. In 1491 a Franciscan friar called Bernardino Caimi, back from the Holy Land, set out to recreate Jerusalem here for pilgrims who could never make the journey. The result is a hilltop village of more than forty chapels filled with life-size painted terracotta and wooden figures, hundreds of them, telling the life of Christ like a frozen theatre. Gaudenzio Ferrari, the great Renaissance painter of this valley, worked on many of them.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 155 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal. Next is Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine.
Oropa is a sanctuary on a scale that surprises everyone who comes up the valley from Biella for the first time. At almost twelve hundred metres, in a bowl of mountains, a vast complex of churches, courtyards, porticoes and pilgrim lodgings rises in terraces, built over several centuries around an ancient chapel that holds a Black Madonna, a wooden statue of the Virgin that legend attributes to St Luke. Above the main buildings, a Sacro Monte of chapels with life-size statues illustrates the life of Mary along a wooded path. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy listed by UNESCO in 2003, and one of the most important Marian shrines in the Alps.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine, about halfway. Next is Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi.
Lake Orta is the quiet sister of Lake Maggiore, smaller, calmer and more mysterious, and on a wooded hill above its prettiest town stands a holy mountain dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi. The Sacro Monte di Orta is a path through a park of beech and chestnut trees, linking twenty chapels built from the end of the sixteenth century onward, each containing life-size terracotta statues and frescoes depicting scenes from the life of the saint. It is one of the nine holy mountains of Piedmont and Lombardy listed together by UNESCO in 2003, created during the Counter-Reformation as places of pilgrimage and devotion.
Read the complete Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi sits at 194 km, about halfway. Next is back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine comes up about 359 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 420 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal. Next is back through Sacro Monte Calvario.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte Calvario, late in the day. Next is Zermatt.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zermatt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 575 km.
Zermatt → Sacro Monte Calvario is 88 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte Calvario → Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 67 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi → back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → back through Sacro Monte Calvario is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte Calvario → Zermatt is 89 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.