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 529 km round trip from Milan - roughly 8 h 39 in the saddle. On the way it passes Crespi d'Adda, Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, Chateau de Sasso Corbaro and Valli di Lodano. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Italy into Switzerland - 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 72 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Most people who come to Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan are here for one painting, and they are right to be. On the wall of the old refectory of the Dominican convent, Leonardo da Vinci painted the Last Supper in the 1490s for Duke Ludovico Sforza, and despite his experimental technique, which began to fail almost at once, despite centuries of damage and despite a bomb that destroyed much of the building in 1943, the painting survives. The wall was protected with sandbags, and the long restoration completed in 1999 revealed colours and faces that had been hidden for centuries.
Read the complete Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari is where the day begins. Next is Crespi d'Adda.
Crespi d'Adda is a whole company town, built from 1878 by the Crespi family of cotton manufacturers on a bend of the Adda river where the water could turn their turbines. Around the mill they laid out rows of neat houses with gardens for the workers, larger villas for the managers, a school, a church that copies the Renaissance church of Santa Maria di Piazza in Busto Arsizio, a washhouse, a hospital, and, on a slight rise at the end of the main street, a cemetery with a strange, almost Mayan-looking mausoleum for the family. It was a paternalistic utopia in which the company looked after its workers from cradle to grave, and UNESCO listed it in 1995 as one of the best-preserved examples of its kind in Europe.
Read the complete Crespi d'Adda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Crespi d'Adda comes up about 44 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 147 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy. Next is Chateau de Sasso Corbaro.
Bellinzona sits at the point where the valleys of the southern Alps converge before opening towards Lake Maggiore and Italy, and whoever held it controlled the routes over the Gotthard, the Lukmanier and the San Bernardino passes. In the fifteenth century the Dukes of Milan built a formidable system of defences here: three castles and a wall that ran across the whole valley floor. Castelgrande, on a rocky hill above the old town, Montebello, on the slope above it, and Sasso Corbaro, highest of all on a wooded spur, together form a World Heritage site. Sasso Corbaro was built in 1479, in a matter of months, after the Swiss Confederates defeated the Milanese at the Battle of Giornico, a short way up the Leventina valley, and the Duke wanted to plug the gap in his defences.
Read the complete Chateau de Sasso Corbaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chateau de Sasso Corbaro, about halfway. Next is Valli di Lodano.
Halfway up the Maggia valley in Ticino, a narrow side valley climbs steeply west from the village of Lodano into a forest that has been left almost untouched for decades. The Valli di Lodano, together with the neighbouring valleys of Busai and Soladino, form a forest reserve in which beech trees grow from the valley floor up to the tree line, and in 2021 they were added to the World Heritage site of the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of Europe, a series of forests spread across eighteen countries. Walking up into the reserve, you pass through old chestnut groves, then into the beech forest, with moss-covered boulders, streams and the sound of falling water everywhere.
Read the complete Valli di Lodano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Valli di Lodano sits at 188 km, about halfway. Next is back through Chateau de Sasso Corbaro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chateau de Sasso Corbaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chateau de Sasso Corbaro comes up about 307 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 379 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy. Next is back through Crespi d'Adda.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Crespi d'Adda write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Crespi d'Adda, late in the day. Next is Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 529 km.
Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari → Crespi d'Adda is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Crespi d'Adda → Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy is 103 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy → Chateau de Sasso Corbaro is 72 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chateau de Sasso Corbaro → Valli di Lodano is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Valli di Lodano → back through Chateau de Sasso Corbaro is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chateau de Sasso Corbaro → back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy is 72 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy → back through Crespi d'Adda is 104 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Crespi d'Adda → Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.