Despite the name, there is no great river here. This Elbe is a village in the rolling farmland of southeastern Lower Saxony, between Salzgitter and Hildesheim, and the river that shares its name flows more than a hundred kilometres to the east. It is a quiet place of brick farmhouses, a church, fields of sugar beet, wheat and rapeseed, and gentle hills, close to the small towns of Baddeckenstedt and Holle in the valley of the Innerste.
The landscape is the northern foreland of the Harz. On a clear day you can see the dark, wooded hills of the Harz on the southern horizon, and the low ridges around here, the Salzgitter hills and the Hainberg, give the roads a pleasant rhythm of short climbs, gentle descents and long views over the fields. In May the rapeseed turns the slopes bright yellow, and in autumn the beet harvest fills the lanes with tractors and mud, so watch the surface.
The region has a strong industrial history hidden beneath the farmland. Iron ore found around Salzgitter led to the creation of huge steelworks in the 1930s, and the town grew rapidly around them, with some of its industry still active today. Hildesheim to the northwest is an old bishop's city with a cathedral and St Michael's Church, both on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and Wolfenbüttel to the east has a large ducal palace and one of the oldest libraries in Europe.
The riding is easygoing: quiet country roads, some well surfaced, others patched and narrow, linking villages through fields and woods. There is little traffic outside rush hour, but watch for farm machinery and wildlife at dawn and dusk. The real curves are a short ride away, in the Harz around Goslar and the hills of the Innerste valley, where the roads climb through forest to dams and reservoirs.
Elbe itself is small, so for fuel and shops head to Holle, Baddeckenstedt or Salzgitter, all within a few kilometres. Village bakeries and inns are found in the area, and a slice of cake and a coffee is a fine excuse to stop. If you were expecting to see the Elbe river, check the route: the Prignitz rides along that river lie far to the northeast, beyond Wolfsburg and Magdeburg.