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 235 km round trip from Murten/Morat - roughly 3 h 51 in the saddle. The stops in between: Les Grèves, Port-Conty, Les Graviers and Le Locle. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 18 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Murten, or Morat as the French speakers call it, is a small walled town on the shore of a lake of the same name, on the language frontier of Switzerland. Its ramparts are among the best preserved in the country, and its main street is lined with arcades and painted fountains. In 1476, it was the site of a decisive battle, when the Swiss Confederates defeated the army of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and ended his attempt to conquer the region. A stone memorial to the battle, and the legend that a runner carried the news of victory to Fribourg, gave Switzerland a long-lasting patriotic story.
Read the complete Môtier I write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Môtier I is where the day begins. Next is Les Grèves.
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 comes up about 18 km into the recorded legs. Next is Port-Conty.
Under the shallow water off Port-Conty lie the remains of villages that were built on stilts more than five thousand years ago, and you will see none of them from the shore. The site, near Saint-Aubin-Sauges on the north-western side of Lake Neuchâtel, is one of the many locations in the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. Archaeologists have found posts, tools, pottery and remains of food preserved in the lake mud, painting a picture of Neolithic and Bronze Age communities who farmed, fished and built their houses along the water's edge.
Read the complete Port-Conty write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 72 km into the recorded legs you reach Port-Conty. Next is Les Graviers.
Auvernier is a wine village with its feet in the water. Its old stone houses, cellars and narrow lanes climb from the shore of Lake Neuchâtel into vineyards, and the lake bed just off its little harbour holds the remains of prehistoric villages. Les Graviers is one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, where archaeologists have found the traces of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements, with wooden piles, tools, pottery and food remains preserved in the lake mud. Many of the finds from the region are displayed at the Laténium, a superb archaeology museum by the lake at Hauterive, on the other side of Neuchâtel.
Read the complete Les Graviers write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Les Graviers, about halfway. Next is Le Locle.
Le Locle, high in the Swiss Jura near the French border, is a town built for making watches. After a series of fires in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was rebuilt on a grid of parallel streets, with houses and workshops designed to let maximum light into the rooms where watchmakers worked at their benches. The town, with neighbouring La Chaux-de-Fonds, was listed by UNESCO in 2009 as an example of urban planning shaped entirely by a single industry. Tissot was founded here in 1853, Zenith in 1865, and many smaller firms continue the tradition. Daniel JeanRichard, a goldsmith who is said to have founded the Jura watch industry, worked here in the eighteenth century.
Read the complete Le Locle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Le Locle sits at 69 km, about halfway. Next is back through Les Graviers.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Les Graviers write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Les Graviers comes up about 147 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Port-Conty.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Port-Conty write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 161 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Port-Conty. Next is back through 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.
back through Les Grèves, late in the day. Next is Môtier I.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Môtier I write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 235 km.
Môtier I → Les Grèves is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Les Grèves → Port-Conty is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Port-Conty → Les Graviers is 14 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Les Graviers → Le Locle is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Le Locle → back through Les Graviers is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Les Graviers → back through Port-Conty is 14 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Port-Conty → back through Les Grèves is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Les Grèves → Môtier I is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.