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 320 km round trip from Villars-sur-Glâne - roughly 4 h in the saddle. It goes by way of L’Abbaye 2, La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle, Forêt de la Bettlachstock and back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle. 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 31 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 L’Abbaye 2.
The north shore of Lake Neuchâtel is a long, gentle slope of vineyards running down to the water, with villages of honey-coloured stone and the Jura rising behind. At Bevaix, on the shore below the village, archaeologists have found traces of prehistoric pile dwellings at a site known as L'Abbaye, named after a medieval priory that once stood nearby. It is one of the Swiss components of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps World Heritage site. Nothing is visible on the surface; the remains lie underwater or in the lake sediments. But the lakeshore is beautiful, and there is a pleasant path along the water.
Read the complete L’Abbaye 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
L’Abbaye 2 comes up about 67 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 98 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 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.
back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle sits at 155 km, about halfway. Next is back through L’Abbaye 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete L’Abbaye 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through L’Abbaye 2 comes up about 253 km into the recorded legs. 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.
En Praz des Gueux closes the day.
En Praz des Gueux → L’Abbaye 2 is 67 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
L’Abbaye 2 → La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle is 31 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 → 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 L’Abbaye 2 is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through L’Abbaye 2 → En Praz des Gueux is 68 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.