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 167 km round trip from Nidau - roughly 2 h 46 in the saddle. The stops in between: Segelboothafen, Les Graviers, Stations de Concise and back through Les Graviers. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 32 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The label says only "Bahnhof", which is a nicely Swiss joke, because the real attraction here is not a station at all but the south shore of Lake Biel between Täuffelen, Gerolfingen and Lüscherz. This is the Seeland, a low, fertile plain between the lakes, and the villages along the shore are surrounded by vegetable fields, orchards and vineyards on the gentle slopes. Like the shores of Lake Neuchâtel to the south, this lake edge was home to prehistoric pile-dwelling villages, and several sites around Lake Biel form part of the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. The finds, from pottery to wooden tools, tell of farming communities that lived here thousands of years ago.
Read the complete Bahnhof write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bahnhof is where the day begins. Next is Segelboothafen.
Murten is the rare Swiss town where you can walk the medieval walls almost all the way round, looking down on brown tiled roofs on one side and the lake on the other. Its sailing harbour, the Segelboothafen, lies just below the old town on the shore of Lake Murten, and in the shallows here are the remains of prehistoric pile dwellings, one of the Swiss components of the transnational World Heritage Site of Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps. Nothing shows above the water, but the lakeshore has been a place to live for thousands of years.
Read the complete Segelboothafen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segelboothafen comes up about 32 km into the recorded legs. Next is Les Graviers.
Auvernier is a wine village with its feet in the water. Its old stone houses, cellars and narrow lanes climb from the shore of Lake Neuchâtel into vineyards, and the lake bed just off its little harbour holds the remains of prehistoric villages. Les Graviers is one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, where archaeologists have found the traces of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements, with wooden piles, tools, pottery and food remains preserved in the lake mud. Many of the finds from the region are displayed at the Laténium, a superb archaeology museum by the lake at Hauterive, on the other side of Neuchâtel.
Read the complete Les Graviers write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 64 km into the recorded legs you reach Les Graviers. Next is Stations de Concise.
In the late 1990s, engineers working on a new stretch of railway along the northern shore of Lake Neuchâtel ran into something unexpected near the village of Concise: layer upon layer of prehistoric settlement, preserved in the waterlogged ground. Over several years, archaeologists uncovered thousands of wooden piles, pottery, tools and food remains from villages that had been built and rebuilt on the shore over many centuries in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. The site is now part of the World Heritage list of pile dwellings around the Alps, though there is little to see above ground today.
Read the complete Stations de Concise write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stations de Concise, about halfway. Next is back through Les Graviers.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Les Graviers write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Les Graviers sits at 101 km, about halfway. Next is back through Segelboothafen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segelboothafen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segelboothafen comes up about 136 km into the recorded legs. Next is Bahnhof.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bahnhof write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bahnhof closes the day.
Bahnhof → Segelboothafen is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segelboothafen → Les Graviers is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Les Graviers → Stations de Concise is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stations de Concise → back through Les Graviers is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Les Graviers → back through Segelboothafen is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segelboothafen → Bahnhof is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.