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.
From Arc-et-Senans it runs 324 km to Arc-et-Senans; allow about 5 h 39 of riding. On the way it passes Fortifications of Vauban, Le Locle, Pointe de Montbec I and back through Le Locle. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from France into Switzerland - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 52 km this is Jura Crest Scenic Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
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 is where the day begins. 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.
Fortifications of Vauban comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Le Locle.
Le Locle, high in the Swiss Jura near the French border, is a town built for making watches. After a series of fires in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was rebuilt on a grid of parallel streets, with houses and workshops designed to let maximum light into the rooms where watchmakers worked at their benches. The town, with neighbouring La Chaux-de-Fonds, was listed by UNESCO in 2009 as an example of urban planning shaped entirely by a single industry. Tissot was founded here in 1853, Zenith in 1865, and many smaller firms continue the tradition. Daniel JeanRichard, a goldsmith who is said to have founded the Jura watch industry, worked here in the eighteenth century.
Read the complete Le Locle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 111 km into the recorded legs you reach Le Locle. Next is Pointe de Montbec I.
The south shore of Lake Neuchâtel is a long, soft margin of reeds, shallow water and woodland, and it hides one of the richest archaeological records in Europe. Pointe de Montbec, near the villages along the Fribourg and Vaud shore opposite Neuchâtel, is one of the places where prehistoric lake dwellers built their villages on the water's edge thousands of years ago. Their houses stood on piles driven into the soft lake shore, and when lake levels rose, the remains were sealed under water and mud, preserving wood, textiles, seeds and tools in astonishing detail. The prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps were inscribed by UNESCO in 2011 as a single serial site spanning six countries, and this shore contributes a good number of them.
Read the complete Pointe de Montbec I write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pointe de Montbec I, about halfway. Next is back through Le Locle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Le Locle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Le Locle sits at 197 km, about halfway. Next is back through Fortifications of Vauban.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fortifications of Vauban write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fortifications of Vauban comes up about 290 km into the recorded legs. Next is Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
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 closes the day.
Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans → Fortifications of Vauban is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fortifications of Vauban → Le Locle is 76 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Le Locle → Pointe de Montbec I is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pointe de Montbec I → back through Le Locle is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Le Locle → back through Fortifications of Vauban is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Fortifications of Vauban → Saline Royale d'Arc-et-Senans is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.