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 Bad Schussenried it runs 374 km to Bad Schussenried; allow about 6 h 31 of riding. It goes by way of Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura, Lone Valley, Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen and Limessection between Watchtowers WP 13/5 a. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. 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.
Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura comes up about 50 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 104 km into the recorded legs you reach Lone Valley. Next is Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen.
The largest Roman cavalry fort north of the Alps stood on the site of today's Aalen, in the eastern Swabian Jura. It was home to a regiment of a thousand horsemen, the ala II Flavia, the most prestigious cavalry unit on the Raetian frontier, and its walls enclosed a huge area, with barracks, stables, granaries and a headquarters building. Beside it grew a civilian settlement, with traders, craftsmen and families. Today the site is home to the Limesmuseum Aalen, one of the most important museums of the Roman frontier in Germany, with excavated foundations, reconstructions and a rich collection of finds. It is part of the Upper German-Raetian Limes World Heritage site.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen, about halfway. Next is Limessection between Watchtowers WP 13/5 a.
In the fields near Wilburgstetten, in the west of Franconia, a low ridge runs across the landscape, overgrown with grass and bushes. It looks like nothing much, but it is the remains of the Raetian Limes, the stone wall that marked the frontier of the Roman province of Raetia in the second and third centuries. Unlike the Upper German Limes to the north west, which was mostly a palisade and ditch, the Raetian section was eventually built as a continuous stone wall, more than a hundred and sixty kilometres long. Local people later called it the Teufelsmauer, the Devil's Wall, believing it could only have been built by supernatural forces. The section between watchtowers here is part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site.
Read the complete Limessection between Watchtowers WP 13/5 a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Limessection between Watchtowers WP 13/5 a sits at 184 km, about halfway. Next is back through Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen comes up about 225 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Lone Valley.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lone Valley write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 271 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Lone Valley. 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, late in the day. Next is 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.
The route ends here after 374 km.
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 → Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen → Limessection between Watchtowers WP 13/5 a is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Limessection between Watchtowers WP 13/5 a → back through Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort site and civil settlement of Aalen → back through Lone Valley is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through 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 → Siedlung Forschner is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.