Tin, not silver, was the business of Ehrenfriedersdorf. For around eight hundred years miners dug into the Sauberg hill above this small Erzgebirge town for tin ore, and the Ehrenfriedersdorf mining landscape, with its shafts, spoil heaps, ponds and ditches, is one of the components of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region World Heritage Site. The Sauberg visitor mine lets you go underground into galleries worked by generations of miners, and the hard hat, the damp cold and the drip of water make the history very physical.
Water was the key to mining here. To drain the mines and power the machinery, miners built reservoirs and long ditches that collected rain and snowmelt from the hills, and some of these ponds survive as peaceful lakes in the forest today. The landscape around the town, with its patchwork of forest, meadow and old mining sites, has a gentle, slightly melancholy charm.
Just outside town, the Greifensteine are a group of granite towers rising out of the forest, a natural landmark with a viewpoint on top and an open-air stage below, where plays and concerts are performed in summer. Geyer, a few kilometres away, has the Geyersberg Binge, a huge collapse crater left by centuries of mining, and Thum and Annaberg-Buchholz are close. Annaberg's St Anne's church, one of the finest late Gothic hall churches in Saxony, was paid for by silver, and Adam Ries, the arithmetic master whose name every German knows from the phrase nach Adam Riese, lived and worked in the town.
The riding is a pleasure. The roads wind through the hills, forests and villages, with short climbs and descents and plenty of curves. Traffic is light outside the towns, and the views from the higher points reach far across the mountains. The Zschopau valley to the east has a particularly nice road. Winter is long and snowy, and the riding season is roughly from May to October. Mornings can be foggy in the valleys.
The town itself, one kilometre away, has fuel, as do Thum and Geyer. Look out for Buttermilchgetzen, a potato pancake made with buttermilk, and hearty soups. A visit to the mine followed by a walk up the Greifensteine makes a good half-day break from the bike.