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.
From Allensbach it runs 242 km to Allensbach; allow about 4 h 15 of riding. The stops in between: Nussbaumersee, Storen-Wildsberg, Hurden Rosshorn and back through Storen-Wildsberg. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Germany into Switzerland - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Scenic road chapters
Grand Tour of Switzerland
The ride follows Grand Tour of Switzerland for 46 km.
Chapter facts
Length
46 km
Named road
Grand Tour of Switzerland
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Allensbach-Strandbad
Lake Constance does not do dramatic. It does soft: a huge sheet of water, a far shore that comes and goes with the haze, and little towns with tidy promenades that seem to have been tidied again while you were not looking. Allensbach's Strandbad is one of those spots, a lido on the Gnadensee, the western arm of the lake, with a swimming area, grass banks and a view across to the Reichenau island and the Swiss shore beyond.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Allensbach-Strandbad is where the day begins. Next is Nussbaumersee.
2. Nussbaumersee
Out in the Thurgau countryside, between Frauenfeld and the Rhine, a chain of small lakes lies in a glacial hollow: the Nussbaumersee, the Hüttwilersee and the Hasensee, with the wetland of the Seebachtal around them. It is a place of reeds and still water, where herons stand in the shallows and dragonflies hang over the surface. The Nussbaumersee is the biggest of them, a modest lake with a wooded shore, and a footpath circles it.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Nussbaumersee comes up about 46 km into the recorded legs. Next is Storen-Wildsberg.
3. Storen-Wildsberg
The Greifensee lies just east of Zurich, a shallow, quiet lake of about six kilometres in length, framed by reeds, meadows and the gentle hills of the Zurich Oberland. Its shores are largely protected, and there is no road running right along the water, which keeps it remarkably calm for a lake so close to Switzerland's biggest city. At Storen-Wildsberg near the village of Greifensee, the remains of a prehistoric settlement lie under the water and in the shoreline sediments, one of the Swiss sites in the UNESCO listing of Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps. As with all of them, it is the ground itself that is protected; there is nothing to see except the reeds and the water.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 95 km into the recorded legs you reach Storen-Wildsberg. Next is Hurden Rosshorn.
4. Hurden Rosshorn
Where Lake Zurich narrows to a waist between Rapperswil and Hurden, a low peninsula runs out from the Schwyz shore, and at its tip, the Rosshorn, the remains of prehistoric lakeside villages lie beneath the shallow water. People lived here in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, in houses built on wooden piles, and they also built some of the earliest known bridges across the narrows. The site is one of the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps that UNESCO listed in 2011, a group of sites that has given archaeologists a remarkably detailed view of everyday life thousands of years ago, preserved in the mud of lakes and moors.