Garbsen is a big, flat suburb of Hannover, made mostly of new housing, shopping streets and industry, and it has no pretensions beyond being a practical place to start. The Mittelland Canal runs close by, carrying barges between the Rhine and the Elbe, and the whole area lies on the edge of the North German Plain, where the sky takes up most of the view. That, however, is the point. Within twenty minutes you are among fields, woods and moorland, and the city has gone.
The goal is Steinhuder Meer, the largest lake in Lower Saxony, which lies about thirty kilometres to the north-west. It is wide, with a surface of some thirty square kilometres, and astonishingly shallow, only about three metres deep at the most, so that on a calm day it looks like a large silver dish laid on the land. In the middle sits Wilhelmstein, a tiny artificial island with a fortress that Count Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe built in the 1760s as a military school, one of the odd little relics of German princely life. Boats cross to it from the village of Steinhude, whose narrow lanes of low houses are full of smokehouses selling eel, the local speciality, which you may like or loathe.
The riding is gentle. The roads around the lake run through reed beds, birch woods and bog, with plenty of long, flat straights and the occasional bend. Further west, the Rehburg Hills rise to a modest height, a ridge of forest with a few sweeping gradients and quiet roads through beech woods, an unexpected relief after the flatlands. This is relaxing country rather than a technical challenge. The best months are May to September, with wind off the lake a constant, and early morning mist over the moor in autumn.
The moors around the lake are a nature reserve, and in spring and autumn the birdlife is remarkable, with cranes, ospreys and great numbers of geese passing through. Garbsen and nearby suburbs offer all the fuel stations, supermarkets and bakeries you could want, so fill the tank here, since the villages near the lake are small. On sunny weekends the shores and lanes are full of cyclists and families, so allow time. A plate of smoked eel or a simple Matjes herring with potatoes, eaten by the water, is a fitting reward.