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 Nidau it runs 323 km to Nidau; allow about 5 h 15 of riding. The stops in between: Stations de Concise, Fortifications of Vauban and back through Stations de Concise. It crosses from Switzerland into France - 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 54 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Biel and Bienne are the same city, one name in German and one in French, and street signs, conversations and even jokes switch between the two languages without anyone noticing. At its western edge, the lakeside district of Vingelz, with its small harbour, has given archaeologists remains of prehistoric pile dwellings in the shallow water of Lake Biel, and the site is one piece of the World Heritage property for pile dwellings around the Alps. The lake, long and narrow, lies at the foot of the Jura mountains, and its shores have been inhabited for thousands of years.
Read the complete Vingelz / Hafen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vingelz / Hafen is where the day begins. Next is Stations de Concise.
In the late 1990s, engineers working on a new stretch of railway along the northern shore of Lake Neuchâtel ran into something unexpected near the village of Concise: layer upon layer of prehistoric settlement, preserved in the waterlogged ground. Over several years, archaeologists uncovered thousands of wooden piles, pottery, tools and food remains from villages that had been built and rebuilt on the shore over many centuries in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. The site is now part of the World Heritage list of pile dwellings around the Alps, though there is little to see above ground today.
Read the complete Stations de Concise write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stations de Concise comes up about 54 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fortifications of Vauban.
Victor Hugo was born in Besançon in 1802, and so were the Lumière brothers, the pioneers of cinema, a generation later. The capital of Franche-Comté sits in a tight loop of the river Doubs, with the old town on the peninsula inside the loop and the citadel on a rock at the neck, closing the only side not protected by water. The citadel was built by Vauban, Louis XIV's great military engineer, after the French conquest of the region in the late seventeenth century, and it is one of the twelve groups of Fortifications of Vauban listed by UNESCO in 2008.
Read the complete Fortifications of Vauban write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 161 km into the recorded legs you reach Fortifications of Vauban. Next is back through Stations de Concise.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stations de Concise write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Stations de Concise, late in the day. Next is Vingelz / Hafen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vingelz / Hafen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Vingelz / Hafen. That is the ride.
Vingelz / Hafen → Stations de Concise is 54 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Stations de Concise → Fortifications of Vauban is 107 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Fortifications of Vauban → back through Stations de Concise is 108 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Stations de Concise → Vingelz / Hafen is 54 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.