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 349 km round trip from Boniswil - roughly 5 h 23 in the saddle. The stops in between: Sumpf, Hurden Rosshorn, Egelsee and Konstanz-Hinterhausen. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Switzerland into Germany - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Scenic road chapters
Grand Tour of Switzerland
The ride follows Grand Tour of Switzerland for 42 km.
Chapter facts
Length
42 km
Named road
Grand Tour of Switzerland
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Riesi is where the day begins. Next is Sumpf.
2. Sumpf
Zug-Sumpf was a Bronze Age village on the northern shore of Lake Zug, near the mouth of the river Lorze between Cham and Steinhausen, and the waterlogged ground preserved wooden floors, posts and objects for over three thousand years. Excavations in the twentieth century recovered pottery, bronze tools and even remains of food, and the site sits on the World Heritage list as part of the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. Some of the finds are displayed in the museum of prehistory in Zug. Today the site lies under modern buildings and meadows, and only the name, which means swamp, recalls its watery origin.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Sumpf comes up about 38 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hurden Rosshorn.
3. Hurden Rosshorn
Where Lake Zurich narrows to a waist between Rapperswil and Hurden, a low peninsula runs out from the Schwyz shore, and at its tip, the Rosshorn, the remains of prehistoric lakeside villages lie beneath the shallow water. People lived here in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, in houses built on wooden piles, and they also built some of the earliest known bridges across the narrows. The site is one of the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps that UNESCO listed in 2011, a group of sites that has given archaeologists a remarkably detailed view of everyday life thousands of years ago, preserved in the mud of lakes and moors.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 75 km into the recorded legs you reach Hurden Rosshorn. Next is Egelsee.
4. Egelsee
There is almost nothing to see at the Egelsee, and that is part of its charm. It is a small, reed-fringed bog lake in the rolling Thurgau countryside between Gachnang and Frauenfeld, and under its peat and mud lie the remains of a Neolithic lakeside settlement, timber piles and floor layers preserved for thousands of years because air never reached them. It is one of the many sites that make up the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps on the UNESCO list, and unlike the reconstructed villages you find elsewhere, this one has been left in the ground on purpose. Archaeologists consider the soggy earth the best museum there is.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Egelsee, about halfway. Next is Konstanz-Hinterhausen.
5. Konstanz-Hinterhausen
There is nothing to see at Konstanz-Hinterhausen, and that is precisely the point. Below the surface of Lake Constance, along the shore near the city, lie the remains of prehistoric pile dwellings: wooden posts, floors, pottery and food remains preserved in the mud for thousands of years. They are part of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, a World Heritage site that spans six countries and over a hundred locations. Archaeologists dive to study them, but the rest of us have to make do with the view of the lake and a bit of imagination.