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 267 km round trip from Estavayer-le-Lac - roughly 4 h 03 in the saddle. On the way it passes Corcelettes Les Violes, La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle, Bahnhof and back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 900 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 42 km this is Jura Crest Scenic Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The label is simply Village, which tells you the scouts did not have a better name, so this entry is really about the shore of Lake Neuchâtel between Estavayer-le-Lac and Cortaillod. Here the lake is wide and calm, a long sliver of water set between the Jura mountains to the northwest and the rolling Fribourg country to the southeast. The southern shore is special. A broad belt of reeds, marsh and woodland runs along it, known as the Grande Cariçaie, which is the largest lakeshore wetland in Switzerland and a refuge for many birds, dragonflies and amphibians.
Read the complete Village write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Village is where the day begins. Next is Corcelettes Les Violes.
Corcelettes is a little lakeside hamlet just north of Grandson, near the southern tip of Lake Neuchâtel, and Les Violes is the stretch of shallow shore where Bronze Age people built a village of wooden houses on piles, some three thousand years ago. The site was one of the first in the region to attract attention in the nineteenth century, when low water levels after the correction of the Jura waters exposed forests of ancient posts in the mud. It is now listed among the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps.
Read the complete Corcelettes Les Violes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Corcelettes Les Violes comes up about 42 km into the recorded legs. Next is La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle.
At about a thousand metres up in the Jura, in a long, high valley where winter arrives early and leaves late, two towns spent two centuries making most of the world's watches. La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle are strange, fascinating places: not pretty old towns, but industrial cities laid out on a grid, with long parallel streets of apartment blocks designed to let maximum light into workshops where generations of craftsmen assembled tiny gears by the window. Their urban planning, built entirely around one industry, is on the World Heritage list.
Read the complete La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 91 km into the recorded legs you reach La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle. Next is Bahnhof.
The label says only "Bahnhof", which is a nicely Swiss joke, because the real attraction here is not a station at all but the south shore of Lake Biel between Täuffelen, Gerolfingen and Lüscherz. This is the Seeland, a low, fertile plain between the lakes, and the villages along the shore are surrounded by vegetable fields, orchards and vineyards on the gentle slopes. Like the shores of Lake Neuchâtel to the south, this lake edge was home to prehistoric pile-dwelling villages, and several sites around Lake Biel form part of the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. The finds, from pottery to wooden tools, tell of farming communities that lived here thousands of years ago.
Read the complete Bahnhof write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bahnhof, about halfway. Next is back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle sits at 141 km, about halfway. Next is back through Corcelettes Les Violes.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Corcelettes Les Violes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Corcelettes Les Violes comes up about 224 km into the recorded legs. Next is Village.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Village write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Village closes the day.
Village → Corcelettes Les Violes is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Corcelettes Les Violes → La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle → Bahnhof is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bahnhof → back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle → back through Corcelettes Les Violes is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Corcelettes Les Violes → Village is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.