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 66 km round trip from Zürich - roughly 1 h 32 in the saddle. It goes by way of Rorenhaab, Hurden Rosshorn and back through Rorenhaab. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 15 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Rorenhaab.
The winter of 1853 to 1854 was so dry that the water in Lake Zurich fell to an unusually low level, and at Obermeilen, on the eastern shore, villagers extending their land into the lake found rows of wooden piles sticking out of the mud, along with pottery, bone tools and stone axes. The antiquarian Ferdinand Keller studied the finds and concluded that they came from prehistoric villages built on platforms over the water, and his reports launched the pile dwelling craze that swept through Europe in the nineteenth century. Rorenhaab, at Obermeilen, is that very site, and it is part of the pile dwellings around the Alps listing inscribed by UNESCO in 2011.
Read the complete Rorenhaab write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rorenhaab comes up about 15 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hurden Rosshorn.
Where Lake Zurich narrows to a waist between Rapperswil and Hurden, a low peninsula runs out from the Schwyz shore, and at its tip, the Rosshorn, the remains of prehistoric lakeside villages lie beneath the shallow water. People lived here in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, in houses built on wooden piles, and they also built some of the earliest known bridges across the narrows. The site is one of the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps that UNESCO listed in 2011, a group of sites that has given archaeologists a remarkably detailed view of everyday life thousands of years ago, preserved in the mud of lakes and moors.
Read the complete Hurden Rosshorn write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 31 km into the recorded legs you reach Hurden Rosshorn. Next is back through Rorenhaab.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rorenhaab write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Rorenhaab, late in the day. Next is 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 at Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner. That is the ride.
Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner → Rorenhaab is 15 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Rorenhaab → Hurden Rosshorn is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hurden Rosshorn → back through Rorenhaab is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Rorenhaab → Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.