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 463 km round trip from Villars-sur-Glâne - roughly 7 h 26 in the saddle. It goes by way of Stations de Concise, La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle, Forêt de la Bettlachstock and Egolzwil 3. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
For about 43 km this is Jura Crest Scenic Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
This part of the ride is 62 km of Grand Tour of Switzerland.
Fribourg is the town where French and German meet. It was founded in 1157 by the dukes of Zähringen on a rock in a loop of the Sarine river, and the old city still sits above the water, with a Gothic cathedral, covered wooden bridges and steep cobbled lanes. The border between the languages runs through the city, so locals switch between French and a Swiss German dialect, and the divide has a name, the Röstigraben, after the potato dish that lies on one side. Beyond the city, the canton is green and rolling, with farms, forests and pastures that produce the famous cheese of Gruyères.
Read the complete En Praz des Gueux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
En Praz des Gueux is where the day begins. Next is Stations de Concise.
In the late 1990s, engineers working on a new stretch of railway along the northern shore of Lake Neuchâtel ran into something unexpected near the village of Concise: layer upon layer of prehistoric settlement, preserved in the waterlogged ground. Over several years, archaeologists uncovered thousands of wooden piles, pottery, tools and food remains from villages that had been built and rebuilt on the shore over many centuries in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. The site is now part of the World Heritage list of pile dwellings around the Alps, though there is little to see above ground today.
Read the complete Stations de Concise write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stations de Concise comes up about 54 km into the recorded legs. Next is La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle.
At about a thousand metres up in the Jura, in a long, high valley where winter arrives early and leaves late, two towns spent two centuries making most of the world's watches. La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle are strange, fascinating places: not pretty old towns, but industrial cities laid out on a grid, with long parallel streets of apartment blocks designed to let maximum light into workshops where generations of craftsmen assembled tiny gears by the window. Their urban planning, built entirely around one industry, is on the World Heritage list.
Read the complete La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 97 km into the recorded legs you reach La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle. Next is Forêt de la Bettlachstock.
Above the watchmaking towns of Grenchen and Bettlach, the first chain of the Jura rises like a wall out of the Aare plain, and on its steep southern flank grows the beech forest of the Bettlachstock. In 2021 it became one of the Swiss components of the UNESCO Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe, a serial site that stretches across the continent to show how beech spread after the last Ice Age. What makes this patch special is that it has been left largely to itself for decades, on slopes so steep and rocky that nobody bothered to log them hard, and so the trees grow old, fall, rot and feed the next generation.
Read the complete Forêt de la Bettlachstock write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Forêt de la Bettlachstock, about halfway. Next is Egolzwil 3.
Archaeologists named a whole Neolithic culture after Egolzwil, a small village in the canton of Lucerne, because the settlements found in the Wauwiler Moos, a former lake turned into peat bog, revealed a way of life older than anything else known in the region at the time. Egolzwil 3, one of these sites, was a village of farmers who lived on the shore of a small lake over six thousand years ago, and it counts as one component of UNESCO's inscription of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. The lake was drained in the nineteenth century to create farmland, and the remains were preserved in the wet peat.
Read the complete Egolzwil 3 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Egolzwil 3 sits at 198 km, about halfway. Next is back through Forêt de la Bettlachstock.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Forêt de la Bettlachstock write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Forêt de la Bettlachstock comes up about 304 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 368 km into the recorded legs you reach back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle. Next is back through Stations de Concise.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stations de Concise write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Stations de Concise, late in the day. Next is En Praz des Gueux.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete En Praz des Gueux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 463 km.
En Praz des Gueux → Stations de Concise is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stations de Concise → La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle → Forêt de la Bettlachstock is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Forêt de la Bettlachstock → Egolzwil 3 is 72 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Egolzwil 3 → back through Forêt de la Bettlachstock is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Forêt de la Bettlachstock → back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle → back through Stations de Concise is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Stations de Concise → En Praz des Gueux is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.