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 210 km round trip from Estavayer-le-Lac - roughly 3 h 42 in the saddle. The stops in between: Strandboden, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Bahnhof and back through La Chaux-de-Fonds. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. 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 26 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Reeds, mostly. That is the first thing you notice when you roll down to Les Grèves on the southern shore of Lake Neuchâtel: a soft wall of reed and willow between the fields and the water, with the Jura sitting long and blue on the far side of the lake. This stretch between Portalban, Gletterens and Chevroux belongs to the Grande Cariçaie, the biggest lakeshore marsh in Switzerland, and it only exists because people once moved an entire lake level.
Read the complete Les Grèves write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Les Grèves is where the day begins. Next is Strandboden.
Erlach sits at the south-western tip of Lake Biel, a little Bernese town of one steep street climbing to a castle, with vineyards on the slope behind and reed beds and beaches along the shore below. The flat ground by the water, the Strandboden, is where archaeologists have found traces of prehistoric lakeside villages, part of the network of pile dwelling sites around the Alps inscribed by UNESCO in 2011. Five or six thousand years ago farmers built their houses here on posts at the water's edge, and the waterlogged mud preserved timbers, tools, seeds and even textiles in astonishing detail.
Read the complete Strandboden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Strandboden comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is La Chaux-de-Fonds.
La Chaux-de-Fonds sits at nearly a thousand metres in the Swiss Jura, on a high, windswept plateau where the winters are long and cold, and it should not really exist. There is no river, no great harbour and no easy farmland, but the people who settled here in the seventeenth century turned to making clocks in their farmhouses during the winter, and the town became the world's capital of watchmaking. After a great fire in 1794, it was rebuilt on a grid pattern, with wide, straight streets that allowed light to reach the workshops and homes, and with the long, high windows that watchmakers needed. That orderly plan is why it is listed by UNESCO, together with its neighbour Le Locle.
Read the complete La Chaux-de-Fonds write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 62 km into the recorded legs you reach La Chaux-de-Fonds. Next is Bahnhof.
The label says only "Bahnhof", which is a nicely Swiss joke, because the real attraction here is not a station at all but the south shore of Lake Biel between Täuffelen, Gerolfingen and Lüscherz. This is the Seeland, a low, fertile plain between the lakes, and the villages along the shore are surrounded by vegetable fields, orchards and vineyards on the gentle slopes. Like the shores of Lake Neuchâtel to the south, this lake edge was home to prehistoric pile-dwelling villages, and several sites around Lake Biel form part of the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. The finds, from pottery to wooden tools, tell of farming communities that lived here thousands of years ago.
Read the complete Bahnhof write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bahnhof, about halfway. Next is back through La Chaux-de-Fonds.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Chaux-de-Fonds write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through La Chaux-de-Fonds sits at 120 km, about halfway. Next is back through Strandboden.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Strandboden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Strandboden comes up about 184 km into the recorded legs. Next is Les Grèves.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Les Grèves write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Les Grèves closes the day.
Les Grèves → Strandboden is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Strandboden → La Chaux-de-Fonds is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Chaux-de-Fonds → Bahnhof is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bahnhof → back through La Chaux-de-Fonds is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through La Chaux-de-Fonds → back through Strandboden is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Strandboden → Les Grèves is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.