Hildesheim looks, from the ring road, like any prosperous middle-sized German city, with chain stores, car dealers and a ring of fuel stations, and that is exactly why it is a useful gate. Over a hundred thousand people live here, the fuel is plentiful, and the town sits in the open farmland of the Hildesheimer Börde, where black soil grows sugar beet and wheat. Filling up here before the Harz means you can take the hills without watching the needle, because once you climb towards Bad Harzburg and the Okertal the villages get small and stations get scarce.
The reason to stay a little longer is the old centre, and the story that goes with it. In March 1945 a bombing raid destroyed most of the historic town, which had been one of the finest collections of half-timbered houses in northern Germany. The market square was rebuilt in the decades after, as a careful copy of what had been there, including the tall Knochenhauer-Amtshaus, a butchers' guildhall with its carved upper floors. It looks old but it is young, and the locals will tell you so with pride. Hildesheim also has two churches, the cathedral and St Michael's, that are both on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Behind the cathedral a wild rose grows against the apse wall, and according to the legend it has been there since the ninth century, when Emperor Louis the Pious founded the bishopric. It was bombed to nothing in 1945, and sent up fresh shoots from the roots afterwards. Whatever you believe about the date, it is a nice story.
For a rider, the pleasure of the place is mostly the way it connects. To the south the Innerste valley and the green wooded ridges of the Harz foothills begin within half an hour, and the roads there turn from straight and fast to tight and shaded. In the morning the sun is behind you as you ride east, and in summer it is warm enough that you want a coffee in the old market before you start. Parking for bikes is easy in the pedestrian zone fringe, but watch the cobbles and the tram-free streets around the centre where one-way systems can confuse a satnav.