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 Fronreute it runs 262 km to Fronreute; allow about 4 h 50 of riding. It goes by way of Siedlung Forschner, Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura, Lone Valley and back through Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura. Rivers set the line for much of the day.
The ride follows Schreckensee → Siedlung Forschner for 27 km.
The Schreckensee, the lake of terror, is a disappointingly peaceful place for such a dramatic name. It is a small kettle lake in the moraine country of Upper Swabia, between Ravensburg and Aulendorf, left behind when a block of glacial ice melted at the end of the last Ice Age. Its shores, now partly bog and reed bed, hide the remains of prehistoric settlements, and it is one of the German sites in the UNESCO listing of Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps. As at most of these sites, nothing is visible on the surface; the timbers and household waste lie preserved underwater and in the peat, waiting for future archaeologists.
Read the complete Schreckensee write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Schreckensee is where the day begins. Next is Siedlung Forschner.
Long before the Federsee became a moor, it was a lake with villages along its edge, and the villagers built on wet ground. In the Bronze Age, people here set their houses on timber platforms and foundations at the water's edge, and as the lake slowly silted up, the waterlogged peat sealed their remains. Wooden posts, tools and pottery survived in astonishing condition. The Siedlung Forschner, named for the farmer on whose land it lay, is one of the excavated settlements, and it belongs to the group of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps that UNESCO listed in 2011.
Read the complete Siedlung Forschner write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Siedlung Forschner comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura.
Forty thousand years ago, someone sitting in a cave above the Ach valley carved a tiny woman out of mammoth ivory, and someone else made a flute from the wing bone of a griffon vulture. Both were found in the Hohle Fels near Schelklingen, a few kilometres from where you are standing, and they rank among the oldest figurative art and musical instruments ever found. The caves of the Ach and Lone valleys were inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2017 as the Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura, and they changed how archaeologists think about the first modern humans in Europe.
Read the complete Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 77 km into the recorded legs you reach Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura. Next is Lone Valley.
The Lone is a small river in the Swabian Jura, east of Ulm, that often vanishes underground in dry weather, slipping into the limestone and leaving its bed empty. Its quiet valley, flanked by wooded slopes and limestone cliffs, holds caves where some of the oldest figurative art in the world was found. In the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave, fragments of a figure carved from mammoth ivory were pieced together into the Lion Man, a being with a human body and a lion's head, around forty thousand years old. In the Vogelherd cave, tiny ivory animals, a horse, a mammoth, a cave lion, emerged from the sediment.
Read the complete Lone Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lone Valley, about halfway. Next is back through Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura sits at 167 km, about halfway. Next is back through Siedlung Forschner.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Siedlung Forschner write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Siedlung Forschner comes up about 234 km into the recorded legs. Next is Schreckensee.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Schreckensee write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Schreckensee closes the day.
Schreckensee → Siedlung Forschner is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Siedlung Forschner → Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura → Lone Valley is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lone Valley → back through Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura → back through Siedlung Forschner is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Siedlung Forschner → Schreckensee is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.