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 325 km round trip from Nidau - roughly 5 h 35 in the saddle. The stops in between: Stations de Concise, Fortifications of Vauban and back through Stations de Concise. It crosses from Switzerland into France - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 55 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Stations de Concise.
In the late 1990s, engineers working on a new stretch of railway along the northern shore of Lake Neuchâtel ran into something unexpected near the village of Concise: layer upon layer of prehistoric settlement, preserved in the waterlogged ground. Over several years, archaeologists uncovered thousands of wooden piles, pottery, tools and food remains from villages that had been built and rebuilt on the shore over many centuries in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. The site is now part of the World Heritage list of pile dwellings around the Alps, though there is little to see above ground today.
Read the complete Stations de Concise write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stations de Concise comes up about 55 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fortifications of Vauban.
Victor Hugo was born in Besançon in 1802, and so were the Lumière brothers, the pioneers of cinema, a generation later. The capital of Franche-Comté sits in a tight loop of the river Doubs, with the old town on the peninsula inside the loop and the citadel on a rock at the neck, closing the only side not protected by water. The citadel was built by Vauban, Louis XIV's great military engineer, after the French conquest of the region in the late seventeenth century, and it is one of the twelve groups of Fortifications of Vauban listed by UNESCO in 2008.
Read the complete Fortifications of Vauban write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 162 km into the recorded legs you reach Fortifications of Vauban. Next is back through Stations de Concise.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stations de Concise write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Stations de Concise, late in the day. Next is Rütte.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rütte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Rütte. That is the ride.
Rütte → Stations de Concise is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stations de Concise → Fortifications of Vauban is 107 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Fortifications of Vauban → back through Stations de Concise is 108 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Stations de Concise → Rütte is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.