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 225 km round trip from Frauenfeld - roughly 4 h 21 in the saddle. The stops in between: Wangen-Hinterhorn, Wollmatingen-Langenrain, Sipplingen-Osthafen and Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen. It crosses from Switzerland into Germany - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules.
The ride follows Grand Tour of Switzerland for 33 km.
For about 31 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
There is almost nothing to see at the Egelsee, and that is part of its charm. It is a small, reed-fringed bog lake in the rolling Thurgau countryside between Gachnang and Frauenfeld, and under its peat and mud lie the remains of a Neolithic lakeside settlement, timber piles and floor layers preserved for thousands of years because air never reached them. It is one of the many sites that make up the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps on the UNESCO list, and unlike the reconstructed villages you find elsewhere, this one has been left in the ground on purpose. Archaeologists consider the soggy earth the best museum there is.
Read the complete Egelsee write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Egelsee is where the day begins. Next is Wangen-Hinterhorn.
When the water of the Untersee, the western arm of Lake Constance, was unusually low in the winter of 1853 to 1854, people around the Swiss and German shores noticed wooden posts sticking out of the mud. They were the remains of prehistoric pile dwellings, villages built on the lakeshore thousands of years ago, and the find sparked a wave of research and a craze for lake-dwelling romance across Europe. Wangen, on the German shore of the Untersee, was one of the first sites studied, and Wangen-Hinterhorn belongs to the World Heritage inscription for prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, though there is nothing to see above the water.
Read the complete Wangen-Hinterhorn write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wangen-Hinterhorn comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is Wollmatingen-Langenrain.
Konstanz is the German city that sits on Switzerland's lap, so close to the border that the two towns, Konstanz and Kreuzlingen, run into each other with a fence in between. The old town lies on the narrows between the Obersee and the Untersee, the two halves of Lake Constance, where the Rhine leaves the lake, and it has one of the best preserved medieval centres in southern Germany. Its survival has a simple explanation: it was not bombed in the Second World War, partly because of its closeness to neutral Switzerland. In the early fifteenth century, it hosted the Council of Constance, which ended a split in the Catholic Church and condemned the reformer Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in 1415.
Read the complete Wollmatingen-Langenrain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 64 km into the recorded legs you reach Wollmatingen-Langenrain. Next is Sipplingen-Osthafen.
At Sipplingen the north shore of Lake Constance changes character. The Überlinger See, the long north-western arm of the lake, is hemmed in here by steep molasse cliffs and wooded slopes rising to the Sipplinger Berg, and the village sits on a narrow strip between the hill and the water. Below the surface off the eastern harbour lie the remains of prehistoric pile dwellings, villages of wooden houses built on stilts along the shore some five to six thousand years ago. They are part of the World Heritage site of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps.
Read the complete Sipplingen-Osthafen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sipplingen-Osthafen, about halfway. Next is Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen.
Unteruhldingen is where most people first meet the prehistoric lake dwellers of the Alps, thanks to the Pfahlbaumuseum, an open-air museum of reconstructed houses on stilts standing in the shallow water of Lake Constance. It started in the 1920s and has been adding houses ever since, and walking along the wooden walkways between thatched huts gives you a vivid idea of village life thousands of years ago. The real archaeological sites, like Stollenwiesen just offshore, lie underwater, a series of settlements preserved in lake mud and listed by UNESCO in 2011 as part of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps.
Read the complete Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen sits at 70 km, about halfway. Next is back through Sipplingen-Osthafen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sipplingen-Osthafen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sipplingen-Osthafen comes up about 133 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Wollmatingen-Langenrain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Wollmatingen-Langenrain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 171 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Wollmatingen-Langenrain. Next is back through Wangen-Hinterhorn.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Wangen-Hinterhorn write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Wangen-Hinterhorn, late in the day. Next is Egelsee.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Egelsee write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 225 km.
Egelsee → Wangen-Hinterhorn is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wangen-Hinterhorn → Wollmatingen-Langenrain is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wollmatingen-Langenrain → Sipplingen-Osthafen is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sipplingen-Osthafen → Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen → back through Sipplingen-Osthafen is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sipplingen-Osthafen → back through Wollmatingen-Langenrain is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Wollmatingen-Langenrain → back through Wangen-Hinterhorn is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Wangen-Hinterhorn → Egelsee is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.