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.
From Zürich it runs 139 km to Zürich; allow about 3 h 05 of riding. The stops in between: Rorenhaab, Hurden Rosshorn, Robenhausen and Technikum. 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 16 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 16 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 32 km into the recorded legs you reach Hurden Rosshorn. 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.
Robenhausen, about halfway. Next is Technikum.
Students at the technical university in Rapperswil study engineering on a lakeside campus, and beneath the shoreline in front of their buildings lie the remains of villages that people built on piles thousands of years ago. The site, named after the old Technikum, as the college was long known, is one of the prehistoric pile dwelling sites around Lake Zurich included in the UNESCO listing of 2011. Nothing is visible, but the idea that this shore has been home to people for so long gives a different perspective to a stroll along the promenade.
Read the complete Technikum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Technikum sits at 71 km, 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 comes up about 87 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Hurden Rosshorn.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hurden Rosshorn write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 104 km into the recorded legs you reach back through 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.
The route ends here after 139 km.
Grosse Stadt Kleiner Hafner → Rorenhaab is 16 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 → Robenhausen is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Robenhausen → Technikum is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Technikum → back through Robenhausen is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Robenhausen → back through Hurden Rosshorn is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through 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.