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.
407 km from Yvonand to Yvonand, about 6 h of riding. It goes by way of Rütte, Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp and back through Rütte. It crosses from Switzerland into France - 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 about 64 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
At the south end of Lake Neuchâtel, below the old Roman and medieval town of Yverdon, the shore turns into a wide, flat belt of reed beds and meadow, one of the biggest areas of shoreline marsh in Switzerland. Le Marais, near the village of Yvonand, belongs to this landscape, and like many places along the lake it also belongs to the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings that UNESCO lists, because the shallows hold timbers and artefacts from villages built on stilts thousands of years ago. The remains lie under water or mud, so there is nothing to see at the spot but reeds, willows and the glinting lake, but a visit to the museum in Yverdon or Neuchâtel brings the finds to life.
Read the complete Le Marais write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Le Marais is where the day begins. Next is Rütte.
Rütte sits on the gentle southern slope above Lake Biel, a scatter of farms and orchards between the village of Bellmund and the lakeshore, with the long blue ridge of the Jura filling the view across the water. Nidau and the city of Biel are a few minutes away, yet up here it feels thoroughly rural: cows, cherry trees, a sharp smell of cut grass in early summer and the clank of a tractor somewhere below.
Read the complete Rütte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rütte comes up about 64 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp.
Notre-Dame-du-Haut sits on a hill above Ronchamp, at the foot of the Vosges, and it is one of the strangest and most beautiful buildings of the twentieth century. Le Corbusier designed it in the early 1950s and it was consecrated in 1955. The white walls curve and lean, the roof sweeps up like a hull or a hat, and the thick walls are pierced by small deep windows filled with coloured glass. Inside, light falls in coloured pools on the floor, and the whole room feels carved rather than built. There has been a pilgrim chapel on this hill for centuries, and the earlier church was destroyed in the war, which is what led to the commission.
Read the complete Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 217 km into the recorded legs you reach Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp. Next is back through Rütte.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rütte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Rütte, late in the day. Next is Le Marais.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Le Marais write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Le Marais. That is the ride.
Le Marais → Rütte is 64 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Rütte → Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp is 153 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Haut de Ronchamp → back through Rütte is 126 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Rütte → Le Marais is 63 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.