Grand Tour of Switzerland · part 4

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. Place association under review. The retained source text conflicts with its location label; verify the stop in the planner before using it.

   1. Cossonay

   The label says Neuchâtel, but you are not at the lake. Neuchâtel, with its castle and its long, pale blue lake, is a good forty kilometres to the north-east, past the first folds of the Jura. This is the landscape on the way, a rolling plateau of farms, orchards and beech woods, where the road to Neuchâtel begins.

   Read the complete Neuchâtel write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Cossonay is where the day begins. Next is Jura.

2. 2. Jura

   The real Jura mountains rise on the far northern shore as a long, wooded wall, and the whole scene has the unhurried look of a place where wine, boats and long lunches are taken seriously.

   Read the complete Jura write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Jura comes up about 83 km into the recorded legs. Next is Basel.

3. Place association under review. The retained source text conflicts with its location label; verify the stop in the planner before using it.

   3. Biel/Bienne

   Despite the label, this is Biel, or Bienne in French, a bilingual city of nearly fifty thousand at the northern tip of Lake Biel, and one of the most underrated towns in Switzerland. It sits where the lake meets the first long ridge of the Jura, and its centre is a mixture of a medieval old town, with a fountain-filled square and half-timbered houses, and the clean, grid-like modernism of the twentieth-century town that grew up around the watch factories.

   Read the complete Basel write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 107 km into the recorded legs you reach Basel. Next is Aarau.

4. Place association under review. The retained source text conflicts with its location label; verify the stop in the planner before using it.

   4. Basel

   Again the label misleads: this is Basel, the Swiss city where the Rhine turns north, and its position at the meeting of three countries makes it feel more European than most. France and Germany both begin within a few kilometres of the city centre, and the river carries barges, tourists and swimmers through the heart of town. In summer, Baslers float down the river in the current with their clothes in waterproof bags, and the riverbanks fill with picnics and music.

   Read the complete Aarau write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Aarau, about halfway. Next is Waypoint 25.

5. 5. Near Lenzburg

   Schloss Lenzburg crowns a rounded hill above the town, so prominent that you can see it from miles away on the motorway, and it has been watching over this part of the Aargau since the eleventh century. The castle has passed through the hands of counts, the Habsburgs, the city of Bern and private owners, and today it is a museum, with gardens and views over the Seetal and the Jura.

   Read the complete Near Lenzburg write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Waypoint 25 sits at 395 km, late in the day. Next is Waypoint 26.

6. 6. Zürich

   Zurich is the polite, prosperous kind of city that keeps its history discreet. It lies at the northern end of Lake Zurich, where the Limmat river runs out of the lake and through the old town, and it began as a Roman customs post called Turicum on the hill now known as the Lindenhof. By the sixteenth century it was a centre of the Reformation under Huldrych Zwingli, who preached at the Grossmunster, the twin-towered church that still dominates the skyline. Across the river, the Fraumunster holds stained glass windows by Marc Chagall, and the light inside on a bright morning is worth a short detour.

   Read the complete Zurich write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 302 km.