Ahrensburg is where Hamburg lets go of you. Northeast of the city, on the edge of the Stormarn district, the urban sprawl thins out into villas and fields, and the town acts as a final pocket of services before the roads open into proper countryside. It is a prosperous commuter town of about thirty thousand people, with tidy streets, a good supply of fuel stations and a station on the S-Bahn line, and for riders leaving the city, it is a clean, simple place to top up and get your bearings.
It has a surprise at its heart. The palace of Ahrensburg, a Renaissance building from the late sixteenth century, stands on a moated island, white and red with stepped gables and corner towers, and looks as though it belongs in the Netherlands or Denmark. It was built by the Rantzau family, one of the powerful noble houses of Holstein, and it is among the best preserved of its kind in northern Germany. The interior is open to visitors as a museum, and the grounds, with their avenue and canal, are free to walk. A short stroll in the park is a pleasant way to stretch after the city traffic.
The name also belongs to archaeology. Ahrensburg gave its name to the Ahrensburg culture, a group of reindeer hunters who lived in the region at the end of the last ice age, about twelve thousand years ago, and whose flint tools and arrow shafts were first found in the tunnel valley nearby. It is a reminder that the plain north of Hamburg has been hunted over and lived in since the glaciers retreated.
The riding is the main thing. From Ahrensburg, a number of country roads run north and east into Schleswig-Holstein, through farmland, woods and little villages. The surface is generally good, the traffic thins quickly after the town, and the landscape grows softer with every kilometre. The morning rush hour is the main hazard, and it makes sense to leave before seven or after nine. Fill up here, since the first stretch of the countryside has fewer petrol stations than you might think. Take a moment in the quiet streets of the old town before you go, and enjoy the feeling of the city falling away.