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 289 km round trip from Vevey - roughly 4 h 59 in the saddle. On the way it passes La Bessime, Forêt de la Bettlachstock and back through La Bessime. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
82 km on Grand Tour of Switzerland.
In the 1920s Le Corbusier built a house for his parents on the shore of Lake Geneva, and he called it, a little ruefully, the little house, la petite maison. It stands at Corseaux, just east of Vevey, and it is tiny, only about sixty square metres of living space on a strip of garden between the railway and the water. The design is a manifesto in small. A single long window frames the lake and the mountains of Savoy like a painting, the garden wall has a table and a window cut into it, and every cupboard and corner has a purpose. His mother lived there into her nineties, and he wrote a little book about it. The house is part of the UNESCO listing of his works, and it can be visited in the season, with timed guided tours.
Read the complete Petite villa au bord du lac Léman write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Petite villa au bord du lac Léman is where the day begins. Next is La Bessime.
Lake Neuchâtel is the largest lake entirely within Switzerland, a long, narrow body of water at the foot of the Jura mountains, and its shallow shores have been home to people for thousands of years. La Bessime is one of the prehistoric pile-dwelling sites of the lake, part of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, listed by UNESCO in 2011. Like most such sites, it lies underwater or buried in the lake bed, with the remains of wooden posts, tools, pottery and food preserved in the mud, invisible to the visitor but invaluable to archaeologists.
Read the complete La Bessime write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La Bessime comes up about 63 km into the recorded legs. Next is Forêt de la Bettlachstock.
Above the watchmaking towns of Grenchen and Bettlach, the first chain of the Jura rises like a wall out of the Aare plain, and on its steep southern flank grows the beech forest of the Bettlachstock. In 2021 it became one of the Swiss components of the UNESCO Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe, a serial site that stretches across the continent to show how beech spread after the last Ice Age. What makes this patch special is that it has been left largely to itself for decades, on slopes so steep and rocky that nobody bothered to log them hard, and so the trees grow old, fall, rot and feed the next generation.
Read the complete Forêt de la Bettlachstock write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 145 km into the recorded legs you reach Forêt de la Bettlachstock. Next is back through La Bessime.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Bessime write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through La Bessime, late in the day. Next is Petite villa au bord du lac Léman.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Petite villa au bord du lac Léman write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Petite villa au bord du lac Léman. That is the ride.
Petite villa au bord du lac Léman → La Bessime is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Bessime → Forêt de la Bettlachstock is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Forêt de la Bettlachstock → back through La Bessime is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through La Bessime → Petite villa au bord du lac Léman is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.