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 389 km round trip from Sirmione - roughly 6 h 32 in the saddle. The stops in between: Molina di Ledro, Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te and back through Molina di Ledro. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 102 km this is Lake Garda Western Shore and Strada della Forra, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Lake Garda's southern shore is a landscape made by ice. At the end of the last glaciation a huge tongue of ice pushed out of the Alps and left behind a ring of moraine hills, curved like an amphitheatre, with the lake in the middle and the Po plain beyond. The shallow bay near Sirmione, where the lake meets the low land, was settled very early, and Lugana Vecchia is one of the prehistoric pile-dwelling sites around the Alps that UNESCO has grouped together as a World Heritage Site. Villages of timber houses on stilts stood in the shallows or on the shore here in the Bronze Age, and the wet ground preserved wood, textiles and tools that would have rotted elsewhere.
Read the complete Lugana Vecchia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lugana Vecchia is where the day begins. Next is Molina di Ledro.
In 1929, when the level of Lake Ledro was lowered to feed a hydroelectric plant, thousands of wooden posts emerged from the mud near Molina di Ledro. They were the remains of a Bronze Age pile-dwelling village, inhabited some four thousand years ago, and the finds included pottery, tools, weapons, and a canoe. Molina di Ledro is part of the UNESCO-listed Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, and the Museo delle Palafitte, on the lake shore, displays the finds alongside reconstructed huts on stilts.
Read the complete Molina di Ledro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Molina di Ledro comes up about 102 km into the recorded legs. Next is Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te.
Valcamonica, the long valley of the Oglio river north of Lake Iseo, holds one of the largest collections of prehistoric rock carvings in the world, with hundreds of thousands of figures pecked into smooth glacier-polished rocks over thousands of years. It was the first site in Italy to be listed by UNESCO, in 1979. The Luine park, on a wooded hill above Darfo Boario Terme at the southern end of the valley, is one of the places where you can see these engravings up close, with paths leading between rock surfaces covered in figures of animals, people, weapons and mysterious symbols.
Read the complete Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 196 km into the recorded legs you reach Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te. Next is back through Molina di Ledro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Molina di Ledro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Molina di Ledro, late in the day. Next is Lugana Vecchia.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lugana Vecchia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Lugana Vecchia. That is the ride.
Lugana Vecchia → Molina di Ledro is 102 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Molina di Ledro → Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te is 94 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Parco Comunale di Luine di Darfo-Boario Te → back through Molina di Ledro is 94 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Molina di Ledro → Lugana Vecchia is 99 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.