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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 369 km round trip from Fiesch - roughly 6 h 22 in the saddle. It goes by way of Sacro Monte Calvario, Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità, Mercurago and Monte San Giorgio. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,350 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Switzerland into Italy - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 65 km this is Simplon Pass Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
No road comes anywhere near. This is a landscape of ice, rock and sky, the first Alpine area to be listed as a World Heritage site, and the riding is all around it rather than through it.
Read the complete Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch is where the day begins. Next is Sacro Monte Calvario.
Domodossola's holy mountain rises immediately above the town, on the wooded Mattarella hill, and the walk or ride up gives you the whole Ossola valley at your feet. The Sacro Monte Calvario was begun in the seventeenth century as a devotional path of chapels depicting the Passion of Christ, each holding painted and sculpted scenes, leading up to a sanctuary church at the top. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy inscribed together on the UNESCO list, and it has a particular link with Antonio Rosmini, the philosopher-priest who founded his religious institute here in the nineteenth century.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte Calvario comes up about 65 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità, 46 km on.
High above the western shore of Lake Maggiore, in a forest of chestnut and beech above the village of Ghiffa, a small sanctuary dedicated to the Holy Trinity looks out over the water to the hills of Lombardy. The Sacro Monte of Ghiffa began in the seventeenth century as a series of chapels along a path, each meant to illustrate a scene from sacred history for pilgrims, but it was never completed as planned. It is the smallest of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy listed by UNESCO in 2003, and its charm lies in its intimacy and its setting: a few chapels, a porticoed walkway and a church in the woods, with the lake shining below.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 105 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità. Next is Mercurago.
Just south of Arona, at the southern tip of Lago Maggiore, a small regional park protects a landscape of woods, meadows and peat bogs called the Lagoni di Mercurago. The lagoni are small ponds and wetlands formed after the retreat of the glaciers, and in the nineteenth century, while peat was being dug, the remains of a Bronze Age pile dwelling settlement were found here, including a wooden wheel. Mercurago is part of the UNESCO site of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps.
Read the complete Mercurago write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mercurago, about halfway. Next is Monte San Giorgio.
Monte San Giorgio is a wooded, pyramid-shaped mountain on the shores of Lake Lugano, straddling the border between Switzerland and Italy. To the eye, it is a pleasant green hill with villages on its slopes. To palaeontologists, it is one of the most important fossil sites in the world. About two hundred and forty million years ago, during the Middle Triassic, this area was a tropical lagoon, and its sediments preserved an extraordinary range of marine reptiles, fish, invertebrates and plants. The mountain was added to the UNESCO list in 2003 on the Swiss side, and in 2010 on the Italian side.
Read the complete Monte San Giorgio write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monte San Giorgio sits at 185 km, about halfway. Next is back through Mercurago.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mercurago write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mercurago comes up about 228 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità, 46 km on.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 263 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità. Next is back through Sacro Monte Calvario.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte Calvario write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte Calvario, late in the day. Next is Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 369 km.
Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch → Sacro Monte Calvario is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte Calvario → Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità → Mercurago is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mercurago → Monte San Giorgio is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Monte San Giorgio → back through Mercurago is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mercurago → back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte della SS.Trinità → back through Sacro Monte Calvario is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte Calvario → Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.