Neustrelitz is a town built for a prince who wanted a new home. After a fire gutted the old hunting seat at Strelitz in 1712, the dukes of Mecklenburg-Strelitz moved to a site beside the Zierker See and, from the 1730s, laid out a baroque town in the shape of a star. Eight streets radiate from the market square, each ending in some small vista, and the geometry is still easy to see from the middle of the square. The palace burned in 1945 and was cleared away, but the park and orangery survive.
This is the heart of the Mecklenburg Lake District, a flat, glaciated country of reeds, pine woods and more than a thousand lakes, and the roads here are a different kind of riding from the Alps. Forget corners. The pleasure is rhythm: long avenues of lime and oak that arch overhead, small villages with red-brick churches, and glimpses of water through the trees. On a still morning in late summer the light on these roads is soft and golden. The surface is usually decent, though old cobbled stretches can appear in village centres and there are plenty of cyclists and tractors in season.
Just to the east lies Müritz National Park, a protected area of beech forest, bog and shoreline where sea eagles nest and, in October, thousands of cranes gather at dusk on the fields to roost. The sight and sound of them is one of the great autumn spectacles of northern Germany, and a reason to ride here late in the year, in warm gear.
Practical needs are easy. With over twenty thousand people, Neustrelitz has several fuel stations, supermarkets and bakeries, and the lakeside harbour has cafes serving smoked fish. Further out the villages thin, and the next fuel can be a long way off, so tank up before you set out across the lakes. Wind is the main enemy: open fields give it free play, particularly in spring.
If you like riding that clears the head rather than the pulse, this is lovely, quiet country and rarely crowded outside July and August.