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 Aix-les-Bains it runs 327 km to Aix-les-Bains; allow about 5 h 05 of riding. The stops in between: Immeuble Clarté, Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux and back through Immeuble Clarté. It crosses from France into Switzerland - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 70 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
The Lac du Bourget is the largest natural lake entirely in France, a long blue trough in the Savoie Prealps, and the shore at Tresserve, just south of Aix-les-Bains, is one of the quiet places to see it. Beneath the water here lie the remains of prehistoric lake dwellings, villages of timber houses built on piles along the shore thousands of years ago. The site is part of the UNESCO-listed Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, a series of more than a hundred settlements in six countries. There is nothing to see above the surface, but knowing it is there changes the way you look at the reeds and shallows.
Read the complete Littoral de Tresserve write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Littoral de Tresserve is where the day begins. Next is Immeuble Clarté.
In 1932, while most of Geneva was building in stone, Le Corbusier put up an apartment block made almost entirely of steel and glass. The Immeuble Clarté, in the Eaux-Vives district on the east side of the city, was revolutionary for its time: a prefabricated steel frame, huge windows that flood the apartments with light, duplex flats with double-height living rooms and a structure that allowed flexible layouts. The name means clarity, and the building lives up to it. Since 2016 it has been part of the UNESCO listing of the architectural work of Le Corbusier, alongside the Villa Savoye, the Unité d'Habitation and other buildings on several continents.
Read the complete Immeuble Clarté write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Immeuble Clarté comes up about 73 km into the recorded legs. Next is Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux.
The Jura plateau behind Clairvaux-les-Lacs is a country of limestone, cows and lakes, and the Grand Lac de Clairvaux is the largest of the lakes that give the town its name. Prehistoric people lived on its shore on pilings, in villages that rose and fell for centuries, and the waterlogged mud preserved their wood and tools. The sites on Clairvaux's lakes are among the pile-dwelling places inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2011. The lake today is a quiet blue sheet, ringed by reeds and low wooded hills, with a beach where families swim in July.
Read the complete Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 164 km into the recorded legs you reach Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux. Next is back through Immeuble Clarté.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Immeuble Clarté write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Immeuble Clarté, late in the day. Next is Littoral de Tresserve.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Littoral de Tresserve write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Littoral de Tresserve. That is the ride.
Littoral de Tresserve → Immeuble Clarté is 73 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Immeuble Clarté → Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux is 91 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux → back through Immeuble Clarté is 91 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Immeuble Clarté → Littoral de Tresserve is 73 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.