There is a giant on the hill above Kassel, and he has been there since the early eighteenth century. The Hercules statue, a copper figure on top of an octagonal structure and a huge stepped pyramid, crowns the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, which the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel began laying out around 1700 as a statement of his power. Below it, a long cascade of steps and basins sends water tumbling down the hillside, and on certain afternoons from May to early October the water features run for the public in a spectacle that takes well over an hour to reach the bottom. UNESCO listed the park in 2013, and it remains one of the largest hillside parks in Europe.
The place is, frankly, a walker's, but the ride up is part of the day. Kassel sits in a basin ringed by the Habichtswald hills, and the approach roads climb through beech woods in a mix of gradual curves and sharper bends. Weekend traffic to the park can be thick, and parking fills early on water-game days, so arrive in the morning if you can. On a clear day the view from the foot of the Hercules reaches across the city and out to the Hessian hills beyond.
Kassel is a big city, nearly two hundred thousand people, so fuel and food are no problem. Baunatal, next door, is home to a large Volkswagen plant. The Brothers Grimm lived and worked in Kassel for years and collected many of their tales from local storytellers, and the city hosts the Documenta art exhibition every five years. In the early nineteenth century Napoleon's brother Jérôme ruled the Kingdom of Westphalia from here, and the palace was renamed Napoleonshöhe for a time.
For the riding proper, head west and south into the Kellerwald, a wooded upland with a national park and beech forests that are also part of a UNESCO listing. The roads there are quieter and more twisting, a better reward than the city traffic. Pick a spring day when the beech leaves are fresh and the park smells of wet stone.