CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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.
308 km from Gavirate to Gavirate, about 5 h 05 of riding. It goes by way of Sacro Monte Calvario, Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch and back through Sacro Monte Calvario. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,350 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Italy into Switzerland - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 65 km this is Simplon Pass Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Lago di Varese is the quiet one. The big lakes, Maggiore and Lugano, grab the postcards and the coach tours, while this shallow, reedy sheet of water just west of Varese gets on with being pretty in a modest way. Off its western shore, a few hundred metres out from Biandronno, floats a tiny wooded island called Isolino Virginia, and that speck of land is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the Alpine world.
Read the complete Isolino Virginia-Camilla-Isola di San Biag write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Isolino Virginia-Camilla-Isola di San Biag is where the day begins. Next is Sacro Monte Calvario.
Domodossola's holy mountain rises immediately above the town, on the wooded Mattarella hill, and the walk or ride up gives you the whole Ossola valley at your feet. The Sacro Monte Calvario was begun in the seventeenth century as a devotional path of chapels depicting the Passion of Christ, each holding painted and sculpted scenes, leading up to a sanctuary church at the top. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy inscribed together on the UNESCO list, and it has a particular link with Antonio Rosmini, the philosopher-priest who founded his religious institute here in the nineteenth century.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte Calvario comes up 64 km in. Next is Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch.
No road comes anywhere near. This is a landscape of ice, rock and sky, the first Alpine area to be listed as a World Heritage site, and the riding is all around it rather than through it.
Read the complete Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
128 km in you reach Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch. Next is back through Sacro Monte Calvario.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte Calvario, late in the day. Next is Isolino Virginia-Camilla-Isola di San Biag.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Isolino Virginia-Camilla-Isola di San Biag write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Isolino Virginia-Camilla-Isola di San Biag. That is the ride.
Isolino Virginia-Camilla-Isola di San Biag → Sacro Monte Calvario is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte Calvario → Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch → back through Sacro Monte Calvario is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte Calvario → Isolino Virginia-Camilla-Isola di San Biag is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.