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.
197 km from Herrliberg to Herrliberg, about 3 h of riding. It goes by way of Hurden Rosshorn, Oterswil / Insel Eielen, Seematte and back through Oterswil / Insel Eielen. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 28 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Under the calm surface of Lake Zurich, just off the shore at Erlenbach, lie the remains of villages that people built here more than five thousand years ago. The site called Winkel is one of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, a UNESCO site of more than a hundred settlements, and here, as elsewhere on the lake, archaeologists diving in the shallow water have found wooden piles, pottery, tools and food remains preserved in the mud. There is nothing to see from the shore, only the water and the reeds, but it is fascinating to think that the people who farmed and fished here in the Neolithic chose the same sunny slope that, thousands of years later, would become known as the Gold Coast.
Read the complete Winkel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Winkel is where the day begins. Next is Hurden Rosshorn.
Where Lake Zurich narrows to a waist between Rapperswil and Hurden, a low peninsula runs out from the Schwyz shore, and at its tip, the Rosshorn, the remains of prehistoric lakeside villages lie beneath the shallow water. People lived here in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, in houses built on wooden piles, and they also built some of the earliest known bridges across the narrows. The site is one of the prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps that UNESCO listed in 2011, a group of sites that has given archaeologists a remarkably detailed view of everyday life thousands of years ago, preserved in the mud of lakes and moors.
Read the complete Hurden Rosshorn write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hurden Rosshorn comes up about 23 km into the recorded legs. Next is Oterswil / Insel Eielen.
Lake Zug is the quiet one among the central Swiss lakes, long and slender, with the Rigi rising steeply from its southern end and gentle farmland and orchards rolling down to its northern shores. Around its edges, as around many Alpine lakes, people built villages on the shore in prehistoric times, and the remains of these settlements at places like Oterswil and the little island of Eielen are among the sites of the transnational pile dwelling listing inscribed by UNESCO in 2011. Under water and mud, wooden piles, pottery and tools have survived for thousands of years.
Read the complete Oterswil / Insel Eielen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 63 km into the recorded legs you reach Oterswil / Insel Eielen. Next is Seematte.
Lake Baldegg lies in the Seetal, the lake valley north of Lucerne, a gentle, green landscape of meadows, orchards and woods, with the lake in the middle and the hills rising on either side. Seematte, on the shore near Hitzkirch, is the site of prehistoric lakeside villages, built on piles over the water's edge thousands of years ago, and it was inscribed in the same 2011 listing that covers lakeside villages from France to Slovenia. As with most such sites, there is nothing to see above ground, but the setting is lovely, and standing on the reedy shore you can imagine the wooden houses and dugout canoes.
Read the complete Seematte write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Seematte, about halfway. Next is back through Oterswil / Insel Eielen.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Oterswil / Insel Eielen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Oterswil / Insel Eielen sits at 116 km, about halfway. Next is back through Hurden Rosshorn.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hurden Rosshorn write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hurden Rosshorn comes up about 174 km into the recorded legs. Next is Winkel.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Winkel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Winkel closes the day.
Winkel → Hurden Rosshorn is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hurden Rosshorn → Oterswil / Insel Eielen is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Oterswil / Insel Eielen → Seematte is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Seematte → back through Oterswil / Insel Eielen is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Oterswil / Insel Eielen → back through Hurden Rosshorn is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hurden Rosshorn → Winkel is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.