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.
Out of Samedan, one way: 396 km, roughly 8 h 41 in the saddle. The stops in between: Bernina, Poschiavo, Lugano and Bellinzona. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,450 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Switzerland into Italy - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 26 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
St. Moritz sits at 1,822 metres in the Engadin, a high, wide valley of larches, lakes and light that people have been praising for centuries. The town's reputation began in 1864, when a hotelier named Johannes Badrutt is said to have bet his English summer guests that they would enjoy the winter in the mountains, and if they did not, he would pay their travel costs. They stayed until Easter, brown from the sun, and winter tourism was born. The Olympic Games came here in 1928 and again in 1948, and the Cresta Run, an ice-cold toboggan track dug into the hillside, has been in use since 1884.
Read the complete St. Moritz write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
St. Moritz is where the day begins. Next is Bernina.
Alp Grüm is the nearest name to the dot, a tiny station on the Bernina railway where a few red trains stop each hour, and a small restaurant clings to the hillside above a view that stops conversation. Across the valley, the Palü glacier hangs below the peak of Piz Palü, and the ice breaks into blue crevasses above a dark lake. At about 2,090 metres, the air is thin and clear, and the sense of being above everything is complete.
Read the complete Bernina write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bernina comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Poschiavo.
Place association under review. The retained source text conflicts with its location label; verify the stop in the planner before using it.
The label says Poschiavo, but the dot actually falls on the Italian side of the border, about twenty-five kilometres south, in the lower Valtellina near Teglio and the Aprica Pass. It is the long, wide valley of the Adda river, running east to west between the Rhaetian Alps to the north and the Orobie Alps to the south, and the hillsides are stitched into terraces, held up by dry-stone walls, that grow the Nebbiolo grapes known here as Chiavennasca. Wines from the Sassella and Inferno zones are strong, mineral and underrated.
Read the complete Poschiavo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 77 km into the recorded legs you reach Poschiavo. Next is Lugano.
Labelled as Lugano, this dot is in fact nowhere near the lake: it lies about sixty kilometres to the east in the Val Brembana, in the Bergamo Alps, among the villages of Piazzatorre and Branzi. This is the Orobie, a range of steep, grassy mountains and rocky summits rising to nearly three thousand metres that most foreign riders never see, and one of the pleasures of looking at it is that nobody seems to be in a hurry.
Read the complete Lugano write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lugano, about halfway. Next is Bellinzona.
The dot sits in the heart of Lugano, a bright, steep little city on the shore of its lake, and it is easy to see why the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino feels like a different country from the German north. Palms grow along the waterfront, the arcades are full of coffee and pastry shops, and the light has an Italian softness, even though the banks are very Swiss. Lugano is the largest city in the canton, with about sixty thousand inhabitants, and one of the main financial centres in the country.
Read the complete Bellinzona write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bellinzona sits at 212 km, late in the day. Next is Gotthard.
Every road across the Alps has a character, and the Gotthard's is that of a main street. For centuries it has been the shortest route between northern Europe and Italy, the pass that built Switzerland's early alliances and that every army, merchant and pilgrim wanted. The summit lies at 2,106 metres, in a bare, grey landscape of granite and small lakes, with a hospice, a museum and little else. From here the water goes four ways: the Reuss flows north to the Rhine, the Ticino south to the Po, and the Rhône and the Rhine begin close by.
Read the complete Gotthard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 396 km.
St. Moritz → Bernina is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bernina → Poschiavo is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Teglio and the Valtellina → Lugano is 95 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lugano → Bellinzona is 126 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Bellinzona → Gotthard is 98 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.