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.
309 km from Bad Schussenried to Bad Schussenried, about 4 h 53 of riding. It goes by way of Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura, Lone Valley, Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen and back through Lone Valley. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Some five thousand years ago, someone in Upper Swabia built a wheel out of a single maple plank, mounted it on an axle and used it to move loads across the soft ground near what is now Bad Schussenried. The wheel turned up during excavations at the moor settlement of Olzreute-Enzisholz and is among the oldest wheels ever found in Central Europe, dated to around 2900 BC. The settlement, a group of pile dwellings on the edge of a former lake, is one of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps listed by UNESCO in 2011, a transnational site across six countries.
Read the complete Olzreute-Enzisholz write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Olzreute-Enzisholz is where the day begins. Next is Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura.
Forty thousand years ago, someone sitting in a cave above the Ach valley carved a tiny woman out of mammoth ivory, and someone else made a flute from the wing bone of a griffon vulture. Both were found in the Hohle Fels near Schelklingen, a few kilometres from where you are standing, and they rank among the oldest figurative art and musical instruments ever found. The caves of the Ach and Lone valleys were inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2017 as the Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura, and they changed how archaeologists think about the first modern humans in Europe.
Read the complete Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura comes up about 55 km into the recorded legs. Next is Lone Valley.
The Lone is a small river in the Swabian Jura, east of Ulm, that often vanishes underground in dry weather, slipping into the limestone and leaving its bed empty. Its quiet valley, flanked by wooded slopes and limestone cliffs, holds caves where some of the oldest figurative art in the world was found. In the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave, fragments of a figure carved from mammoth ivory were pieced together into the Lion Man, a being with a human body and a lion's head, around forty thousand years old. In the Vogelherd cave, tiny ivory animals, a horse, a mammoth, a cave lion, emerged from the sediment.
Read the complete Lone Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 109 km into the recorded legs you reach Lone Valley. Next is Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen.
The largest Roman cavalry fort north of the Alps stood on the site of today's Aalen, in the eastern Swabian Jura. It was home to a regiment of a thousand horsemen, the ala II Flavia, the most prestigious cavalry unit on the Raetian frontier, and its walls enclosed a huge area, with barracks, stables, granaries and a headquarters building. Beside it grew a civilian settlement, with traders, craftsmen and families. Today the site is home to the Limesmuseum Aalen, one of the most important museums of the Roman frontier in Germany, with excavated foundations, reconstructions and a rich collection of finds. It is part of the Upper German-Raetian Limes World Heritage site.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen, about halfway. Next is back through Lone Valley.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lone Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Lone Valley sits at 201 km, about halfway. Next is back through Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura comes up about 255 km into the recorded legs. Next is Olzreute-Enzisholz.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Olzreute-Enzisholz write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Olzreute-Enzisholz closes the day.
Olzreute-Enzisholz → Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura → Lone Valley is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lone Valley → Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen → back through Lone Valley is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Lone Valley → back through Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura → Olzreute-Enzisholz is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.