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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 341 km round trip from Steinhausen - roughly 5 h 53 in the saddle. The stops in between: Riesi, Inkwilersee Insel, Old City of Berne and Rütte. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
43 km on Emmental Panorama Road.
For about 34 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Zug has a reputation as one of the wealthiest places in Switzerland, a small canton of low taxes, glass office blocks and companies registered by the hundred. But beneath the surface, quite literally, lies a much older story. Along the shores of Lake Zug, archaeologists have found the remains of Neolithic and Bronze Age villages built on piles in the shallow water and marshy ground, and Riedmatt, near the border between Steinhausen, Cham and Zug, is one of the sites included in the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps World Heritage listing. As with most such sites, there is nothing visible on the surface; the remains are preserved in the waterlogged ground.
Read the complete Riedmatt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Riedmatt is where the day begins. Next is Riesi.
Riesi is a stretch of shoreline at the northern end of the Hallwilersee, a long, narrow lake in the Aargau Seetal, between the villages of Seengen and Boniswil. It is a peaceful place of reeds, meadows and walking paths, and below the water and in the marshy ground lie the remains of prehistoric pile-dwelling settlements, part of the World Heritage list of such sites around the Alps.
Read the complete Riesi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Riesi comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is Inkwilersee Insel.
You could ride past the Inkwilersee a dozen times without noticing it. It is a small, shallow lake tucked into a fold of farmland right on the line between the cantons of Bern and Solothurn, ringed with reeds and alders, with a tiny wooded island near its middle. That island is the reason for the label: beneath its trees and in the mud around it lie traces of prehistoric lakeside settlement, enough to earn the Inkwilersee a place among the Alpine pile-dwelling sites on the World Heritage list.
Read the complete Inkwilersee Insel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 94 km into the recorded legs you reach Inkwilersee Insel. Next is Old City of Berne.
Bern does not shout. The Swiss capital sits on a sandstone spur in a tight loop of the green Aare, with six kilometres of arcaded streets that let you walk the whole old town in the rain without getting wet. It was founded in 1191 by Duke Berthold V of Zähringen, and legend says he named it after the first animal he killed hunting nearby, a bear. The bears have been the town's mascots ever since, and a few still live in the BärenPark down by the river at the end of the Nydeggbrücke.
Read the complete Old City of Berne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Old City of Berne, about halfway. Next is Rütte.
Rütte sits on the gentle southern slope above Lake Biel, a scatter of farms and orchards between the village of Bellmund and the lakeshore, with the long blue ridge of the Jura filling the view across the water. Nidau and the city of Biel are a few minutes away, yet up here it feels thoroughly rural: cows, cherry trees, a sharp smell of cut grass in early summer and the clank of a tractor somewhere below.
Read the complete Rütte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rütte sits at 171 km, about halfway. Next is back through Old City of Berne.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Old City of Berne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Old City of Berne comes up about 205 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Inkwilersee Insel.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Inkwilersee Insel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 248 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Inkwilersee Insel. Next is back through Riesi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Riesi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Riesi, late in the day. Next is Riedmatt.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Riedmatt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 341 km.
Riedmatt → Riesi is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Riesi → Inkwilersee Insel is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Inkwilersee Insel → Old City of Berne is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Old City of Berne → Rütte is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Rütte → back through Old City of Berne is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Old City of Berne → back through Inkwilersee Insel is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Inkwilersee Insel → back through Riesi is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Riesi → Riedmatt is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.