The last hour of a long ride is often the quietest, and the approach to Hannover from the west has a calm of its own. The point lies in the Calenberg country, near the villages of Großgoltern and Groß Munzel, with the dark ridge of the Deister to the south and the flat plain of the Leine stretching away to the north. Egestorf, five kilometres away, has the nearest shops and fuel, and Barsinghausen is just beyond.
If you are coming home from the Teutoburg Forest and the Externsteine, you have had a long day. The Externsteine, a group of tall sandstone pillars in the forest near Horn-Bad Meinberg, have been a place of pilgrimage and speculation for centuries. A medieval relief carved into the rock shows the descent from the cross, and nobody quite knows what earlier peoples may have done there. They make a striking contrast with the plain and orderly fields around Hannover, which seem tame by comparison.
The country here is soft and ordinary and all the more restful for it. The roads run straight across fields of sugar beet and wheat, interrupted by small brick villages with square church towers, and the Deister's beech forest lifts the horizon to the south. In late afternoon the light slants across the stubble, and the long shadows of the hedgerows stripe the road. A sudden shower can sweep across the plain in minutes, so keep an eye on the sky to the west.
For a final stop, Egestorf has a bakery and a couple of cafés, and Barsinghausen, with its fourteen thousand people, has everything. The local coal mining ended in the 1950s, and the old pithead buildings are now part of a museum, which tells the story of the Deister's underground past. If you have half an hour, walk into the forest and look at the old mining paths. Then switch the engine on, and the last stretch into the city is a gentle glide.