CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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.
332 km from Ronchamp to Ronchamp, about 5 h 18 of riding. It goes by way of Fortifications of Vauban, Le Locle and back through Fortifications of Vauban. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from France into Switzerland - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Notre-Dame-du-Haut sits on a hill above Ronchamp, at the foot of the Vosges, and it is one of the strangest and most beautiful buildings of the twentieth century. Le Corbusier designed it in the early 1950s and it was consecrated in 1955. The white walls curve and lean, the roof sweeps up like a hull or a hat, and the thick walls are pierced by small deep windows filled with coloured glass. Inside, light falls in coloured pools on the floor, and the whole room feels carved rather than built. There has been a pilgrim chapel on this hill for centuries, and the earlier church was destroyed in the war, which is what led to the commission.
Read the complete Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp is where the day begins. Next is Fortifications of Vauban.
Victor Hugo was born in Besançon in 1802, and so were the Lumière brothers, the pioneers of cinema, a generation later. The capital of Franche-Comté sits in a tight loop of the river Doubs, with the old town on the peninsula inside the loop and the citadel on a rock at the neck, closing the only side not protected by water. The citadel was built by Vauban, Louis XIV's great military engineer, after the French conquest of the region in the late seventeenth century, and it is one of the twelve groups of Fortifications of Vauban listed by UNESCO in 2008.
Read the complete Fortifications of Vauban write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fortifications of Vauban comes up 86 km in. Next is Le Locle.
Le Locle, high in the Swiss Jura near the French border, is a town built for making watches. After a series of fires in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was rebuilt on a grid of parallel streets, with houses and workshops designed to let maximum light into the rooms where watchmakers worked at their benches. The town, with neighbouring La Chaux-de-Fonds, was listed by UNESCO in 2009 as an example of urban planning shaped entirely by a single industry. Tissot was founded here in 1853, Zenith in 1865, and many smaller firms continue the tradition. Daniel JeanRichard, a goldsmith who is said to have founded the Jura watch industry, worked here in the eighteenth century.
Read the complete Le Locle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
171 km in you reach Le Locle. Next is back through Fortifications of Vauban.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fortifications of Vauban write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fortifications of Vauban, late in the day. Next is Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp. That is the ride.
Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp → Fortifications of Vauban is 93 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Fortifications of Vauban → Le Locle is 78 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Le Locle → back through Fortifications of Vauban is 78 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Fortifications of Vauban → Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp is 93 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.