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 172 km round trip from Rapperswil - roughly 3 h 04 in the saddle. On the way it passes Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner, Robenhausen, Enge Alpenquai and back through Robenhausen. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 28 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Feldbach is a small village on the northern shore of Lake Zurich, and a very Swiss kind of calm hangs over it. It belongs to the municipality of Hombrechtikon and lies on the sunny stretch locals call the Gold Coast, where steep vineyards and orchards slope down to the water and the houses cost more than most people care to say aloud. The village has a lakeside park with big old trees, a small harbour and a place to swim in summer, and across the water the opposite shore climbs toward the Albis hills.
Read the complete Feldbach write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Feldbach is where the day begins. Next is Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner.
Zürich's lake has been a home for much longer than the city's banks suggest. The names Grosse Stadt and Kleiner Hafner belong to prehistoric settlement sites in the shallows of the Seebecken, the lake basin where the water meets the old town, and they are part of the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. Farmers and fishers built villages on stilts here between roughly 4,000 and 800 BC, and the lake mud kept their traces. The site is underwater, so you cannot see it, but you can stand on the Utoquai or the Alpenquai promenade and imagine it.
Read the complete Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner comes up about 28 km into the recorded legs. Next is Robenhausen.
In 1858 a local man named Jakob Messikommer began digging in the peat bog at Robenhausen, on the southern end of the Pfäffikersee in the Zurich Oberland, and he spent decades uncovering a remarkably rich Neolithic pile-dwelling settlement. His finds, from stone axes to woven textiles and charred bread, travelled to museums around the world and helped make Swiss lake dwellings famous. Today Robenhausen is one of the components of the UNESCO Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, though what remains lies underground in a protected wetland.
Read the complete Robenhausen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 58 km into the recorded legs you reach Robenhausen. Next is Enge Alpenquai.
Zurich's lakefront is one of the most pleasant urban shorelines in Europe, and the Alpenquai, in the district of Enge, is a stretch of it where the city opens up to views across the water to the Alps. On a clear day, especially when the föhn blows from the south, the peaks of the Glarus Alps seem close enough to touch. Under the water off this shore, archaeologists have found the remains of prehistoric villages built on piles along the lake edge, and several of Zurich's shore sites were inscribed in 2011 among the prehistoric pile dwellings of the Alpine lakes. You will see nothing of them from the promenade; they lie in the mud of the lake bed, preserved by the water.
Read the complete Enge Alpenquai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Enge Alpenquai, about halfway. Next is back through Robenhausen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Robenhausen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Robenhausen sits at 110 km, about halfway. Next is back through Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner comes up about 145 km into the recorded legs. Next is Feldbach.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Feldbach write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Feldbach closes the day.
Feldbach → Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner → Robenhausen is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Robenhausen → Enge Alpenquai is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Enge Alpenquai → back through Robenhausen is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Robenhausen → back through Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner → Feldbach is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.