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.
552 km from Vevey to Vevey, about 9 h 30 of riding. It goes by way of Les Roseaux, Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman, Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux and Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Switzerland into France - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
For about 70 km this is Route des Grandes Alpes, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 64 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go. Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
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 Les Roseaux.
Morges sits on the north shore of Lake Geneva between Lausanne and Geneva, with its castle by the harbour and the Alps of Savoy rising across the water. Just east of the town, at a place called Les Roseaux, the reeds, archaeologists found one of the oldest pile dwelling sites on the lake, dating back to the early Bronze Age, and it is part of the UNESCO group of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. Its remains lie underwater and are not visible, but the name and the shore keep the memory.
Read the complete Les Roseaux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Les Roseaux comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman.
On the French shore of Lake Geneva, just across the border from Switzerland, the village of Chens-sur-Léman sits among fields and woods above the water. Along its shoreline, at places such as Tougues and Les Grèves, the remains of prehistoric pile dwellings lie in the shallow water, and they are part of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps World Heritage site. On calm days, when the water is clear and low, it is sometimes possible to see the stumps of ancient wooden piles sticking out of the lakebed, a quiet reminder of the people who lived here thousands of years ago.
Read the complete Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 104 km into the recorded legs you reach Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman. 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.
Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux, about halfway. Next is Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans.
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux wanted to build an ideal city, and he started with a salt factory. The Saline Royale at Arc-et-Senans was built between 1775 and 1779 on the orders of Louis XV's administration, to boil brine into salt, and Ledoux designed it as a perfect half circle of buildings around the director's house, with the workers, the boiling halls and the management all arranged in a geometric order meant to express reason, hierarchy and efficiency. It never grew into the full circular city he imagined, but what was built is astonishing, and it was listed by UNESCO in 1982, later joined by the great saltworks at Salins-les-Bains.
Read the complete Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans sits at 207 km, about halfway. Next is back through Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux comes up about 341 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 448 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman. Next is back through Les Roseaux.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Les Roseaux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Les Roseaux, 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.
The route ends here after 552 km.
Petite villa au bord du lac Léman → Les Roseaux is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Les Roseaux → Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman → Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux is 108 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux → Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans is 64 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans → back through Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux is 65 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Le Grand Lac de Clairvaux → back through Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman is 107 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Littoral de Chens-sur-Léman → back through Les Roseaux is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Les Roseaux → Petite villa au bord du lac Léman is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.