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.
302 km from Yverdon-les-Bains to Yverdon-les-Bains, about 5 h 04 of riding. On the way it passes La Bessime, Le Locle, Chenevières de Guévaux I and back through Le Locle. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. 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 43 km this is Jura Crest Scenic Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Corcelettes is a little lakeside hamlet just north of Grandson, near the southern tip of Lake Neuchâtel, and Les Violes is the stretch of shallow shore where Bronze Age people built a village of wooden houses on piles, some three thousand years ago. The site was one of the first in the region to attract attention in the nineteenth century, when low water levels after the correction of the Jura waters exposed forests of ancient posts in the mud. It is now listed among the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps.
Read the complete Corcelettes Les Violes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Corcelettes Les Violes is where the day begins. Next is La Bessime.
Lake Neuchâtel is the largest lake entirely within Switzerland, a long, narrow body of water at the foot of the Jura mountains, and its shallow shores have been home to people for thousands of years. La Bessime is one of the prehistoric pile-dwelling sites of the lake, part of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, listed by UNESCO in 2011. Like most such sites, it lies underwater or buried in the lake bed, with the remains of wooden posts, tools, pottery and food preserved in the mud, invisible to the visitor but invaluable to archaeologists.
Read the complete La Bessime write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La Bessime comes up about 43 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 104 km into the recorded legs you reach Le Locle. Next is Chenevières de Guévaux I.
Lake Murten is small, shallow and warm, framed on its north side by the vine-covered whale back of Mont Vully. Under its shallows near the Vully shore lie the remains of prehistoric pile-dwelling villages, and Chenevières de Guévaux is one of them, part of the UNESCO site of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps. Between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, people built houses on timber posts along lake shores like this one. Waterlogged conditions preserved posts, tools, textiles and food remains for thousands of years, and the finds transformed what we know about early farming communities in Europe.
Read the complete Chenevières de Guévaux I write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chenevières de Guévaux I, about halfway. Next is back through Le Locle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Le Locle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Le Locle sits at 121 km, about halfway. Next is back through La Bessime.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Bessime write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through La Bessime comes up about 261 km into the recorded legs. Next is Corcelettes Les Violes.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Corcelettes Les Violes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Corcelettes Les Violes closes the day.
Corcelettes Les Violes → La Bessime is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Bessime → Le Locle is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Le Locle → Chenevières de Guévaux I is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chenevières de Guévaux I → back through Le Locle is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Le Locle → back through La Bessime is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through La Bessime → Corcelettes Les Violes is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.