The Loreley is a rock, and not a very tall one, but it has a story that made it more famous than most mountains. It is a steep slab of slate on the east bank of the Rhine, rising well over a hundred metres above the water, at a point where the river narrows and deepens and the current turns treacherous. Boatmen once lost ships here, and the rock's echo and the swirling water gave rise to a legend: a beautiful maiden sits on the summit combing her golden hair and singing, and sailors who look up at her forget the rocks below and are wrecked.
The legend is not ancient. It was shaped by the Romantic poets of the early nineteenth century, and above all by Heinrich Heine, whose 1824 poem, set to music by Friedrich Silcher, became one of the best-known German songs. Today a statue of the Loreley sits on a spit of land at the harbour in St. Goarshausen, looking out across the water, and the rock is the centrepiece of a visitor centre on the plateau above. A road leads up to it from the town, and the view from the top, over the Rhine Gorge and the villages along it, is one of the finest in the whole valley.
For riders, the way up is a pleasure. The road climbs from the river through forest in a series of tight bends, and the surface is generally good. Up on the plateau, the landscape is open and gentle, with wide skies and a mix of woodland and fields. From here you can follow side roads along the ridge, where the traffic is light, and the views to both sides of the gorge appear and vanish between the trees. The river road below is busy but beautiful, with the railway alongside and castles on every spur.
The nearest services are in St. Goar and St. Goarshausen, which have a few shops, and Boppard, about fourteen kilometres away, has more choice. A café and restaurant at the visitor centre serves coffee and cake, and in summer the plateau hosts open air events in an outdoor theatre set into the hillside.
The best time to come is late afternoon, when the sun lights the cliff and the river turns gold. If you can, stay for sunset.