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 Konstanz it runs 211 km to Konstanz; allow about 3 h 39 of riding. The stops in between: Insel Werd, Storen-Wildsberg, Hurden Rosshorn and back through Storen-Wildsberg. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,200 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Germany into Switzerland - 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 24 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Konstanz is the German city that sits on Switzerland's lap, so close to the border that the two towns, Konstanz and Kreuzlingen, run into each other with a fence in between. The old town lies on the narrows between the Obersee and the Untersee, the two halves of Lake Constance, where the Rhine leaves the lake, and it has one of the best preserved medieval centres in southern Germany. Its survival has a simple explanation: it was not bombed in the Second World War, partly because of its closeness to neutral Switzerland. In the early fifteenth century, it hosted the Council of Constance, which ended a split in the Catholic Church and condemned the reformer Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake in 1415.
Read the complete Wollmatingen-Langenrain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wollmatingen-Langenrain is where the day begins. Next is Insel Werd.
Where the Rhine leaves Lake Constance at Stein am Rhein, a group of small islands sits in the river, connected to the shore by a wooden footbridge, and on the largest, Werd, stands a small chapel surrounded by trees and water. It was here, in 759, that Saint Otmar, the first abbot of St Gallen, died in exile after falling foul of powerful local nobles, and the island has been a place of pilgrimage ever since. Long before Otmar, people lived here too: the islands and the surrounding shores are among the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, a World Heritage site, and excavations have found traces of settlements from the Neolithic onwards.
Read the complete Insel Werd write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Insel Werd comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Storen-Wildsberg.
The Greifensee lies just east of Zurich, a shallow, quiet lake of about six kilometres in length, framed by reeds, meadows and the gentle hills of the Zurich Oberland. Its shores are largely protected, and there is no road running right along the water, which keeps it remarkably calm for a lake so close to Switzerland's biggest city. At Storen-Wildsberg near the village of Greifensee, the remains of a prehistoric settlement lie under the water and in the shoreline sediments, one of the Swiss sites in the UNESCO listing of Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps. As with all of them, it is the ground itself that is protected; there is nothing to see except the reeds and the water.
Read the complete Storen-Wildsberg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 79 km into the recorded legs you reach Storen-Wildsberg. 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, about halfway. Next is back through Storen-Wildsberg.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Storen-Wildsberg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Storen-Wildsberg sits at 131 km, about halfway. Next is back through Insel Werd.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Insel Werd write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Insel Werd comes up about 188 km into the recorded legs. Next is Wollmatingen-Langenrain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Wollmatingen-Langenrain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wollmatingen-Langenrain closes the day.
Wollmatingen-Langenrain → Insel Werd is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Insel Werd → Storen-Wildsberg is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Storen-Wildsberg → Hurden Rosshorn is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hurden Rosshorn → back through Storen-Wildsberg is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Storen-Wildsberg → back through Insel Werd is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Insel Werd → Wollmatingen-Langenrain is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.