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 Rapperswil it runs 317 km to Rapperswil; allow about 4 h 50 of riding. It goes by way of Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, Forêt de la Bettlachstock and back through Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
For about 73 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
88 km on Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps → Forêt de la Bettlachstock.
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.
Hurden Rosshorn is where the day begins. Next is Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps.
Five thousand years ago, people were building houses on stilts at the edge of lakes across the Alps, and then the lakes rose, buried the houses and kept them almost perfectly in the mud. The remains of these pile dwellings, found in the nineteenth century when a drought lowered the water, include posts, tools, textiles, food and even bread, and they gave archaeologists an extraordinary view of Stone Age and Bronze Age life. A hundred and eleven of the sites, in six countries, were listed by UNESCO in 2011, and the Swiss share is the largest.
Read the complete Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps comes up about 73 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 161 km into the recorded legs you reach Forêt de la Bettlachstock. Next is back through Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, late in the day. Next is 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.
Back at Hurden Rosshorn. That is the ride.
Hurden Rosshorn → Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps → Forêt de la Bettlachstock is 88 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Forêt de la Bettlachstock → back through Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps is 89 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps → Hurden Rosshorn is 67 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.