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 289 km round trip from Versoix - roughly 5 h 18 in the saddle. On the way it passes Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux, Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans and back through Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Switzerland into France - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 62 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Geneva's lake shore is not the only place where Switzerland feels close at hand, and the stretch north of the city, around Versoix, is one of the quietest. Versoix itself is a calm, lakeside town with a little harbour, a long promenade and a medieval-looking centre, and it is easy to forget how close the French border is.
Read the complete Bourg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bourg is where the day begins. Next is Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux.
The Jura plateau behind Clairvaux-les-Lacs is a country of limestone, cows and lakes, and the Grand Lac de Clairvaux is the largest of the lakes that give the town its name. Prehistoric people lived on its shore on pilings, in villages that rose and fell for centuries, and the waterlogged mud preserved their wood and tools. The sites on Clairvaux's lakes are among the pile-dwelling places inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2011. The lake today is a quiet blue sheet, ringed by reeds and low wooded hills, with a beach where families swim in July.
Read the complete Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux comes up about 80 km into the recorded legs. Next is Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans.
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux wanted to build an ideal city, and he started with a salt factory. The Saline Royale at Arc-et-Senans was built between 1775 and 1779 on the orders of Louis XV's administration, to boil brine into salt, and Ledoux designed it as a perfect half circle of buildings around the director's house, with the workers, the boiling halls and the management all arranged in a geometric order meant to express reason, hierarchy and efficiency. It never grew into the full circular city he imagined, but what was built is astonishing, and it was listed by UNESCO in 1982, later joined by the great saltworks at Salins-les-Bains.
Read the complete Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 144 km into the recorded legs you reach Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans. Next is back through Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux, late in the day. Next is Bourg.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bourg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Bourg. That is the ride.
Bourg → Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux is 80 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux → Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans is 64 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans → back through Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux is 65 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux → Bourg is 80 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.