CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
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Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
1066 km round from Zürich - plan on about 17 h 46 of riding. On the way it passes Schaffhausen, Bodensee, St. Gallen and Appenzell. The highest point is about 2,450 m. Fluela Pass is subject to seasonal closure - check it is open before you set off. It crosses Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Italy - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Switzerland's signed scenic driving route: 1,643 km linking twelve UNESCO sites, five alpine passes and twenty-two lakes. It is a marked touring route rather than a single road, so you meet it in pieces - the piece here follows the Seestrasse along the eastern shore of Lake Zurich through Küsnacht, Meilen and Stäfa before turning inland.
19 km on Grand Tour of Switzerland.
For 28 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zürich is where the day begins. Next is Schaffhausen.
The dot lies a few kilometres south of the Rhine in the quiet Unterland of Zurich canton, near the villages of Rorbas and Freienstein, where the Töss river flows through orchards and woods before it meets the larger river. Schaffhausen itself is further north, but this is the stretch of country that leads you to it, with modest farms, half-timbered houses and the Rhine's wide green valley just beyond the ridge.
Read the complete Schaffhausen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Schaffhausen comes up 43 km in. Next is Bodensee.
Büsingen am Hochrhein is one of Europe's oddities: a German village entirely surrounded by Switzerland, with the Rhine and Swiss fields on every side, and a population of around fourteen hundred. It has its own car plates, uses both euros and Swiss francs in shops, and is part of the Swiss customs area, though it belongs to Germany. Gailingen, next door, has a rich history as the home of the largest Jewish community in Baden, and its old synagogue still stands as a reminder.
Read the complete Bodensee write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
85 km in you reach Bodensee. Next is St. Gallen, 43 km on.
Konstanz and Kreuzlingen are two towns with one street between them. The border runs between buildings, with Germany to the north and Switzerland to the south, and for most of the day people pass through without a glance, going shopping, to work or to a lakeside cafe. Konstanz has about eighty thousand people and a handsome old town on the shore of the Bodensee, while Kreuzlingen is smaller but is the larger of the two Swiss towns on the lake. The Rhine leaves the lake here, flowing west, and the narrow passage between the Obersee and the Untersee is crossed by an old bridge.
Read the complete St. Gallen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
St. Gallen, early in the day. Next is Appenzell.
Every year on the last Sunday in April, the people of Appenzell Innerrhoden gather in the main square, men and women, many with a ceremonial sword or a bayonet at the hip, and vote with raised hands. The Landsgemeinde is one of the last open-air assemblies of its kind in Switzerland, and it takes place in the middle of this small town, which has been the capital of the half-canton for centuries. Women only gained a vote at the cantonal level here in 1990, after a federal court ruling, which tells you something about how conservative the valley is, and also how proud.
Read the complete Appenzell write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Appenzell sits at 171 km, early in the day. Next is Vaduz.
Liechtenstein is a country you can cross in half an hour, a narrow strip of about twenty-five kilometres between the Rhine and the Austrian border, and Vaduz is its small, tidy capital with just over five thousand people. It sits under a steep hill crowned by the castle of Vaduz, a medieval fortress that is the home of the princely family, and its wide valley is closed in by the high wall of the Rätikon mountains. It is a country of banks, postage stamps, dental products and orderly lawns.
Read the complete Vaduz write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Vaduz comes up 213 km in. Next is Chur.
At 593 metres, in a wide bend of the Rhine valley, Chur makes a strong claim to be the oldest town in Switzerland, with traces of settlement going back thousands of years and a Roman presence from the first century BC. It has been the seat of a bishop since late antiquity, and the bishop's court, with its cathedral, sits on a terrace above the old town. Down below, the narrow streets and squares of the Altstadt, with painted houses, fountains and arcades, are a pleasant place to wander after a morning in the saddle.
Read the complete Chur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
256 km in you reach Chur. Next is Davos.
Davos sits in a high, broad valley in the Graubünden Alps at about 1,560 metres, and it calls itself the highest city in Europe, a claim that depends on how you count. The dot is a few kilometres off, in the mountains toward Zernez, probably near the Flüela Pass, where the road climbs to over 2,300 metres between rock and tarn, and the landscape is bare and bright. It is a very different place from the town, which is known for the World Economic Forum in January and for the long ski runs on the Parsenn.
Read the complete Davos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Davos, early in the day. Next is St. Moritz, 43 km on.
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 sits at 341 km, about halfway. 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 384 km in. Next is Poschiavo.
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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.
426 km in 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 512 km, about halfway. 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.
Gotthard comes up 554 km in. Next is Andermatt.
The dot falls north-west of Andermatt, in the high Urner Alps near the Susten Pass road, where granite peaks, glaciers and bare slabs of rock dominate the view and the road clings to the mountainside as it climbs. It is country that feels cold even in summer, with snow lingering in the gullies and the air smelling of stone and meltwater. Andermatt itself, the label on the map, lies about fifteen kilometres to the south-east in the Urseren valley, a flat, wide, windy basin at about 1,440 metres.
Read the complete Andermatt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
597 km in you reach Andermatt. Next is Furka.
Somewhere in the glaciated heart of the Bernese Oberland, close to the Grimsel lakes and a short distance from the Furka Pass, this dot falls in country that belongs more to climbers than to riders. The mountains here are huge and bare, the Finsteraarhorn and its neighbours stand above deep valleys, and the rivers run milky with glacial flour. It is among the wildest parts of the Alps.
Read the complete Furka write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Furka, about halfway. Next is Grimsel.
The dot is in Interlaken, the old tourist town between two lakes, with the label pointing to the Grimsel Pass that lies some forty kilometres to the east. Leukerbad sits on a flat strip of land between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz, which is exactly what its name means, and the Aare river runs through it, a bright blue-green ribbon that is wider than you expect. From here, the great white mass of the Jungfrau and its neighbours fills the southern sky, and on a clear morning it seems close enough to touch.
Read the complete Grimsel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grimsel sits at 682 km, about halfway. Next is Interlaken.
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 Interlaken, but the dot is actually high above the Rhône valley in the canton of Valais, at Leukerbad, a small spa village tucked at the head of a steep side valley under the cliffs of the Gemmi. It is a quiet, curious place, about 1,400 metres above sea level, and it is surrounded by a wall of rock on three sides, with waterfalls streaming from the heights after rain.
Read the complete Interlaken write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Leukerbad comes up 725 km in. Next is Thun.
Place association under review. The retained source text conflicts with its location label; verify the stop in the planner before using it.
The dot is at Sion, the capital of the Valais, a town of about twenty-eight thousand in the broad, sunny Rhône valley, and nowhere near the lake and castle at Thun that the label suggests. Sion is Switzerland's driest region in many places, protected by the high Alps on both sides, and it grows grapes, apricots and asparagus in a climate that feels almost Mediterranean. Two great rocky hills rise from the town floor, each crowned by a medieval fortress.
Read the complete Thun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
768 km in you reach Thun. Next is Bern.
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 Bern, but the dot is in the Chablais, at the lower end of the Rhône valley near Aigle and Vionnaz, about a hundred kilometres south-west of the Swiss capital. This is where the great river, having run west through the Valais, turns north toward Lake Geneva, and the landscape is a mix of broad flat farmland, steep vineyards and bare limestone peaks, the Dents du Midi, whose serrated summits dominate the horizon to the south.
Read the complete Bern write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bern, late in the day. Next is Neuchâtel.
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 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cossonay sits at 853 km, late in the day. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Jura comes up 895 km in. Next is Basel.
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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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
938 km in you reach Basel. Next is Aarau.
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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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Aarau, late in the day. Next is Waypoint 25.
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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Waypoint 25 sits at 1023 km, late in the day. Next is Waypoint 26.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zurich write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Waypoint 26. That is the ride.