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.
318 km from Rapperswil to Rapperswil, about 4 h 51 of riding. It goes by way of Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, Forêt de la Bettlachstock and back through Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
For about 73 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
88 km on Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps → Forêt de la Bettlachstock.
Students at the technical university in Rapperswil study engineering on a lakeside campus, and beneath the shoreline in front of their buildings lie the remains of villages that people built on piles thousands of years ago. The site, named after the old Technikum, as the college was long known, is one of the prehistoric pile dwelling sites around Lake Zurich included in the UNESCO listing of 2011. Nothing is visible, but the idea that this shore has been home to people for so long gives a different perspective to a stroll along the promenade.
Read the complete Technikum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Technikum is where the day begins. Next is Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps.
Five thousand years ago, people were building houses on stilts at the edge of lakes across the Alps, and then the lakes rose, buried the houses and kept them almost perfectly in the mud. The remains of these pile dwellings, found in the nineteenth century when a drought lowered the water, include posts, tools, textiles, food and even bread, and they gave archaeologists an extraordinary view of Stone Age and Bronze Age life. A hundred and eleven of the sites, in six countries, were listed by UNESCO in 2011, and the Swiss share is the largest.
Read the complete Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps comes up about 73 km into the recorded legs. Next is Forêt de la Bettlachstock.
Above the watchmaking towns of Grenchen and Bettlach, the first chain of the Jura rises like a wall out of the Aare plain, and on its steep southern flank grows the beech forest of the Bettlachstock. In 2021 it became one of the Swiss components of the UNESCO Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe, a serial site that stretches across the continent to show how beech spread after the last Ice Age. What makes this patch special is that it has been left largely to itself for decades, on slopes so steep and rocky that nobody bothered to log them hard, and so the trees grow old, fall, rot and feed the next generation.
Read the complete Forêt de la Bettlachstock write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 161 km into the recorded legs you reach Forêt de la Bettlachstock. Next is back through Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, late in the day. Next is Technikum.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Technikum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Technikum. That is the ride.
Technikum → Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps → Forêt de la Bettlachstock is 88 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Forêt de la Bettlachstock → back through Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps is 89 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps → Technikum is 68 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.