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 542 km round trip from Bellinzona - roughly 10 h 17 in the saddle. The stops in between: Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese, Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi and VI.1-Emissario. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,550 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Switzerland into Italy - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. 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 70 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Bellinzona has three castles and a wall, and together they once decided who got through the Alps. The town sits at the head of the Ticino valley where several routes meet, including the roads to the San Bernardino and Gotthard passes, and whoever held it controlled the north-south traffic between Milan and the Swiss lands. Montebello is the middle one of the three, perched on a small hill on the east side of town, and the smallest of the trio. It was built in stages from the thirteenth century onward and expanded by the Visconti and Sforza dukes of Milan before the Swiss cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden took over around 1500.
Read the complete Chateau de Montebello write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chateau de Montebello is where the day begins. Next is Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy.
On the western shore of Lake Como, above the village of Ossuccio and facing the little Isola Comacina, a cobbled path climbs the hillside through olive groves and woods, past fourteen small chapels, to a sanctuary at the top. This is the Sacro Monte of Ossuccio, one of nine sacred mountains in Piedmont and Lombardy listed together by UNESCO. Built in the seventeenth century, the chapels illustrate the Mysteries of the Rosary with life-size terracotta and plaster figures arranged in dramatic scenes, each one a small piece of theatre.
Read the complete Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy comes up about 70 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese.
Above Varese, on the flank of the Campo dei Fiori, a cobbled path climbs two kilometres or so through woods and past fourteen chapels to a medieval sanctuary and the tiny village of Santa Maria del Monte. Each chapel contains a life-size scene of the mysteries of the Rosary, with painted terracotta figures and frescoed backgrounds, and the whole ensemble, built in the seventeenth century under the architect Giuseppe Bernascone, is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2003.
Read the complete Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 129 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese. Next is Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi.
Lake Orta is the quiet sister of Lake Maggiore, smaller, calmer and more mysterious, and on a wooded hill above its prettiest town stands a holy mountain dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi. The Sacro Monte di Orta is a path through a park of beech and chestnut trees, linking twenty chapels built from the end of the sixteenth century onward, each containing life-size terracotta statues and frescoes depicting scenes from the life of the saint. It is one of the nine holy mountains of Piedmont and Lombardy listed together by UNESCO in 2003, created during the Counter-Reformation as places of pilgrimage and devotion.
Read the complete Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi, about halfway. Next is VI.1-Emissario, 47 km on.
Lago di Viverone is a small, warm lake in northern Piedmont, cupped inside one of the most remarkable glacial landforms in Europe. Ice flowing out of the Aosta Valley during the last glaciations dumped a vast ring of moraine here, the Morainic Amphitheatre of Ivrea, and its eastern wall, the Serra, runs for many kilometres as an almost perfectly straight wooded ridge. The lake sits at the foot of it, with the villages of Viverone and Azeglio on its shores and Ivrea around a quarter of an hour's ride to the northwest.
Read the complete VI.1-Emissario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
VI.1-Emissario sits at 190 km, about halfway. Next is back through Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi comes up about 353 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 415 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese. Next is back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, late in the day. Next is Chateau de Montebello.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chateau de Montebello write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 542 km.
Chateau de Montebello → Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy → Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese → Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi → VI.1-Emissario is 81 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
VI.1-Emissario → back through Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi is 80 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Sacro Monte di San Francesco d’Orta San Gi → back through Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte del Rosario di Varese → back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy → Chateau de Montebello is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.