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.
A 431 km round trip from Cevio - roughly 7 h 56 in the saddle. On the way it passes Castel Grande, Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c and Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Switzerland into Italy - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 39 km this is Ticino Lakes and Valleys Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Halfway up the Maggia valley in Ticino, a narrow side valley climbs steeply west from the village of Lodano into a forest that has been left almost untouched for decades. The Valli di Lodano, together with the neighbouring valleys of Busai and Soladino, form a forest reserve in which beech trees grow from the valley floor up to the tree line, and in 2021 they were added to the World Heritage site of the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of Europe, a series of forests spread across eighteen countries. Walking up into the reserve, you pass through old chestnut groves, then into the beech forest, with moss-covered boulders, streams and the sound of falling water everywhere.
Read the complete Valli di Lodano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Valli di Lodano is where the day begins. Next is Castel Grande.
Coming down from the Gotthard or the San Bernardino, the Ticino valley narrows into a bottleneck at Bellinzona, and right in the middle of it, on a rocky hill above the old town, sits Castel Grande. Its two square towers and long crenellated walls are the oldest and largest of the three castles of Bellinzona, which together with the defensive wall across the valley make up a World Heritage site.
Read the complete Castel Grande write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Castel Grande comes up about 39 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy.
On the western shore of Lake Como, above the village of Ossuccio and facing the little Isola Comacina, a cobbled path climbs the hillside through olive groves and woods, past fourteen small chapels, to a sanctuary at the top. This is the Sacro Monte of Ossuccio, one of nine sacred mountains in Piedmont and Lombardy listed together by UNESCO. Built in the seventeenth century, the chapels illustrate the Mysteries of the Rosary with life-size terracotta and plaster figures arranged in dramatic scenes, each one a small piece of theatre.
Read the complete Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 108 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy. Next is The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c.
The Lombards get a bad press in most history books, which tend to treat them as the barbarians who arrived in Italy in 568 and broke what was left of Roman order. Castelseprio tells a subtler story. On a wooded spur above the Olona valley, north-west of Milan, stand the ruins of a late Roman and Lombard castrum, a fortified town that controlled the road between the plain and the Alpine lakes, and just outside its walls is the little church of Santa Maria foris portas, whose frescoes are among the most mysterious and beautiful paintings of early medieval Europe. Down by the river, the stout stone Torba tower, later part of a Benedictine nunnery, completes the group. Together they form one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of the Lombards in Italy.
Read the complete The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c, about halfway. Next is Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari.
Most people who come to Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan are here for one painting, and they are right to be. On the wall of the old refectory of the Dominican convent, Leonardo da Vinci painted the Last Supper in the 1490s for Duke Ludovico Sforza, and despite his experimental technique, which began to fail almost at once, despite centuries of damage and despite a bomb that destroyed much of the building in 1943, the painting survives. The wall was protected with sandbags, and the long restoration completed in 1999 revealed colours and faces that had been hidden for centuries.
Read the complete Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari sits at 176 km, about halfway. Next is back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c comes up about 265 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 320 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy. Next is back through Castel Grande.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Castel Grande write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Castel Grande, late in the day. Next is Valli di Lodano.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Valli di Lodano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 431 km.
Valli di Lodano → Castel Grande is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Castel Grande → Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy → The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c → Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Church and Dominican Convent of Santa Mari → back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The castrum with the Torba Tower and the c → back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy → back through Castel Grande is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Castel Grande → Valli di Lodano is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.