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.
458 km from Ronchamp to Ronchamp, about 8 h 36 of riding. It goes by way of Grand Ventron, La Manufacture à Saint- Dié, Strasbourg and back through La Manufacture à Saint- Dié. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 71 km this is Route des Cretes, Vosges, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
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 Grand Ventron.
At around 1,200 metres, the Grand Ventron is one of the high rounded summits on the main crest of the southern Vosges, where Lorraine meets Alsace. To the west lie the valleys of La Bresse and Ventron; to the east the ground falls steeply into the Thur valley above Kruth. The top is open, grassy and wind combed, a classic Vosges hautes-chaumes landscape of summer pastures, bilberry and granite boulders, with beech and fir forest closing in below. On a clear day the view runs across the Alsace plain to the Black Forest, and on rare exceptional days the Alps show as a pale line far to the south.
Read the complete Grand Ventron write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grand Ventron comes up about 58 km into the recorded legs. Next is La Manufacture à Saint- Dié.
Le Corbusier designed only one factory in his long career, and it stands in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, a town in the Meurthe valley on the western side of the Vosges mountains. The Manufacture Claude et Duval, a hosiery factory built between 1946 and 1951, is a concrete block raised on pilotis, with a roof terrace and brightly coloured interiors, and it embodies many of the architect's principles. It was part of his plans for the reconstruction of Saint-Dié after the town was largely destroyed by the retreating German army in November 1944, though most of his grand urban plan was never built. In 2016, the factory was included in the UNESCO listing of the architectural work of Le Corbusier, alongside buildings in seven countries.
Read the complete La Manufacture à Saint- Dié write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 129 km into the recorded legs you reach La Manufacture à Saint- Dié. Next is Strasbourg.
Strasbourg sits where the Rhine, France and Germany come together, and the city has been passed back and forth between them for centuries. It was a free imperial city, then French from 1681, German from 1871 to 1918, French again, German again in the Second World War, and French since 1944. The history is written into the city, in the half-timbered houses of the Petite France quarter with their steep roofs, in the German-built Neustadt and the Palais du Rhin, in the language, Alsatian, which is a Germanic dialect still spoken by older residents, and in the food, with sauerkraut, tarte flambée and Riesling. Today the city is also the seat of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament.
Read the complete Strasbourg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Strasbourg, about halfway. Next is back through La Manufacture à Saint- Dié.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Manufacture à Saint- Dié write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through La Manufacture à Saint- Dié sits at 253 km, about halfway. Next is back through Grand Ventron.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Grand Ventron write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Grand Ventron comes up about 399 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp closes the day.
Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp → Grand Ventron is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Grand Ventron → La Manufacture à Saint- Dié is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Manufacture à Saint- Dié → Strasbourg is 100 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Strasbourg → back through La Manufacture à Saint- Dié is 100 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through La Manufacture à Saint- Dié → back through Grand Ventron is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Grand Ventron → Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.