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.
Out of Villingen-Schwenningen, one way: 95 km, roughly 1 h 47 in the saddle. The stops in between: Triberg, Schonach and Titisee Neustadt. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
For about 24 km this is Black Forest Panorama Route B500 South, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
41 km on Black Forest Panorama Route B500 South.
Villingen-Schwenningen is two towns that were made to share a name in 1972, and they still do not quite agree. Villingen, to the west, is a medieval walled town in the Black Forest, with gates, towers and a minster, once part of Austria and proud of its carnival, the Fasnet, in which masked figures in elaborate wooden masks and painted costumes parade through the streets in a thunder of whips and bells. Schwenningen, to the east, is younger and more industrial, a clockmaking town that grew in the nineteenth century, and it has the source of the Neckar river in a small park, marked with a stone.
Read the complete Near Villingen-Schwenningen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villingen Schwenningen is where the day begins. Next is Triberg.
Triberg is built in a steep, narrow fold of the Black Forest, a town that seems to have been poured down a gorge and set hard. Houses climb both sides of the Gutach valley, rooftops overlap, and the main street runs steeply uphill past shops full of cuckoo clocks, carved wooden bears and cherry schnapps. It is touristy, no question, but the tourists come because the place is the real thing, the heartland of the Black Forest clock trade, where families have been making timepieces in workshops since the eighteenth century.
Read the complete Near Triberg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Triberg comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Schonach.
Schonach is the Black Forest at its most tightly folded, a village of about four thousand strung along a steep valley, with farms on every ledge and a small ski jump looming over the houses. Winter is its big season: the area is a regular stop for Nordic combined and ski jumping competitions, and the big hill, the Langenwaldschanze, is among the larger in Germany. In summer the same slopes fill with walkers and cyclists, and the church bells carry a long way in the clear air.
Read the complete Schonach write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 28 km into the recorded legs you reach Schonach. Next is Titisee Neustadt.
Neustadt in the Black Forest has none of the lakeside bustle of its neighbour Titisee, and it is better for it. This is a working mountain town of about twelve thousand people on the Gutach river, with a solid church, a market square and a railway station where the Höllentalbahn from Freiburg arrives after its long climb. The line was an engineering feat when it was built in the nineteenth century, winding up the Höllental gorge with a steep rack section in its early decades, and the station is a handsome reminder of the days when the railway was the great modern invention.
Read the complete Near Titisee-Neustadt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Titisee Neustadt, late in the day. Next is Furtwangen.
Furtwangen is a Black Forest town high on a ridge, at about 850 metres, and it is the place where the story of the cuckoo clock is told. The Deutsches Uhrenmuseum, founded in the 1850s to inspire local craftsmen, holds one of the great clock collections in Europe, from early wooden Black Forest pieces with painted faces to elaborate astronomical machines and cuckoo clocks in every size. A clockmaking school was established here too, and it grew into a university of applied sciences, which is why a town of under ten thousand people has a fair number of students.
Read the complete Furtwangen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Furtwangen. That is the ride.
Villingen Schwenningen → Triberg is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Triberg → Schonach is 4 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Schonach → Titisee Neustadt is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Titisee Neustadt → Furtwangen is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.