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 311 km round trip from Wetzikon - roughly 5 h 12 in the saddle. The stops in between: Wollmatingen-Langenrain, Olzreute-Enzisholz and back through Wollmatingen-Langenrain. It crosses from Switzerland into Germany - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
In 1858 a local man named Jakob Messikommer began digging in the peat bog at Robenhausen, on the southern end of the Pfäffikersee in the Zurich Oberland, and he spent decades uncovering a remarkably rich Neolithic pile-dwelling settlement. His finds, from stone axes to woven textiles and charred bread, travelled to museums around the world and helped make Swiss lake dwellings famous. Today Robenhausen is one of the components of the UNESCO Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, though what remains lies underground in a protected wetland.
Read the complete Robenhausen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Robenhausen is where the day begins. Next is Wollmatingen-Langenrain.
Konstanz is the German city that sits on Switzerland's lap, so close to the border that the two towns, Konstanz and Kreuzlingen, run into each other with a fence in between. The old town lies on the narrows between the Obersee and the Untersee, the two halves of Lake Constance, where the Rhine leaves the lake, and it has one of the best preserved medieval centres in southern Germany. Its survival has a simple explanation: it was not bombed in the Second World War, partly because of its closeness to neutral Switzerland. In the early fifteenth century, it hosted the Council of Constance, which ended a split in the Catholic Church and condemned the reformer Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in 1415.
Read the complete Wollmatingen-Langenrain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wollmatingen-Langenrain comes up about 77 km into the recorded legs. Next is Olzreute-Enzisholz.
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.
about 156 km into the recorded legs you reach Olzreute-Enzisholz. Next is back through Wollmatingen-Langenrain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Wollmatingen-Langenrain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Wollmatingen-Langenrain, late in the day. Next is Robenhausen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Robenhausen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Robenhausen. That is the ride.
Robenhausen → Wollmatingen-Langenrain is 77 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wollmatingen-Langenrain → Olzreute-Enzisholz is 79 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Olzreute-Enzisholz → back through Wollmatingen-Langenrain is 78 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Wollmatingen-Langenrain → Robenhausen is 77 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.