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.
410 km from Schelklingen to Schelklingen, about 8 h 18 of riding. The stops in between: Ödenahlen, Schreckensee, Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen and Insel Werd. It crosses from Germany into Switzerland - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
The ride follows Ödenahlen → Schreckensee for 35 km.
For about 89 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Below the village of Schelklingen the Swabian Jura gives up some of the oldest art in the world. In the caves of the Ach and Lone valleys, early modern humans carved ivory and bone about forty thousand years ago, among them a small female figure found in the Hohle Fels cave in 2008, which is among the oldest known sculptures of the human form. Flutes made from bird bone and mammoth ivory turned up too. UNESCO listed six of these caves in 2017 under the title of Caves and Ice Age Art of the Swabian Jura, and a museum in nearby Blaubeuren tells the story well.
Read the complete Ach Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ach Valley is where the day begins. Next is Ödenahlen.
The Federsee basin in Upper Swabia is one of those landscapes that hides its importance. It looks like a flat expanse of reeds, wet meadows and woodland around a shrinking lake, but beneath the peat lie dozens of prehistoric settlements, preserved because the bog kept the oxygen out. Ödenahlen is one of these sites, a Neolithic village on the edge of the moor, and the Federsee settlements are part of the UNESCO Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps. Wooden floors, house walls, wheels and everyday objects have been excavated here, and some of the oldest wooden wheels in Europe come from this region.
Read the complete Ödenahlen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ödenahlen comes up about 38 km into the recorded legs. Next is Schreckensee.
The Schreckensee, the lake of terror, is a disappointingly peaceful place for such a dramatic name. It is a small kettle lake in the moraine country of Upper Swabia, between Ravensburg and Aulendorf, left behind when a block of glacial ice melted at the end of the last Ice Age. Its shores, now partly bog and reed bed, hide the remains of prehistoric settlements, and it is one of the German sites in the UNESCO listing of Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps. As at most of these sites, nothing is visible on the surface; the timbers and household waste lie preserved underwater and in the peat, waiting for future archaeologists.
Read the complete Schreckensee write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 73 km into the recorded legs you reach Schreckensee. Next is Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen.
Unteruhldingen is where most people first meet the prehistoric lake dwellers of the Alps, thanks to the Pfahlbaumuseum, an open-air museum of reconstructed houses on stilts standing in the shallow water of Lake Constance. It started in the 1920s and has been adding houses ever since, and walking along the wooden walkways between thatched huts gives you a vivid idea of village life thousands of years ago. The real archaeological sites, like Stollenwiesen just offshore, lie underwater, a series of settlements preserved in lake mud and listed by UNESCO in 2011 as part of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps.
Read the complete Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen, about halfway. Next is Insel Werd.
Where the Rhine leaves Lake Constance at Stein am Rhein, a group of small islands sits in the river, connected to the shore by a wooden footbridge, and on the largest, Werd, stands a small chapel surrounded by trees and water. It was here, in 759, that Saint Otmar, the first abbot of St Gallen, died in exile after falling foul of powerful local nobles, and the island has been a place of pilgrimage ever since. Long before Otmar, people lived here too: the islands and the surrounding shores are among the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, a World Heritage site, and excavations have found traces of settlements from the Neolithic onwards.
Read the complete Insel Werd write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Insel Werd sits at 158 km, about halfway. Next is back through Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen comes up about 294 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Schreckensee.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Schreckensee write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 337 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Schreckensee. Next is back through Ödenahlen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ödenahlen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ödenahlen, late in the day. Next is Ach Valley.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ach Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 410 km.
Ach Valley → Ödenahlen is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ödenahlen → Schreckensee is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Schreckensee → Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen → Insel Werd is 89 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Insel Werd → back through Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen is 89 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen → back through Schreckensee is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Schreckensee → back through Ödenahlen is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ödenahlen → Ach Valley is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.