Some five thousand years ago, someone in Upper Swabia built a wheel out of a single maple plank, mounted it on an axle and used it to move loads across the soft ground near what is now Bad Schussenried. The wheel turned up during excavations at the moor settlement of Olzreute-Enzisholz and is among the oldest wheels ever found in Central Europe, dated to around 2900 BC. The settlement, a group of pile dwellings on the edge of a former lake, is one of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps listed by UNESCO in 2011, a transnational site across six countries.
There is little to see on the ground: the remains lie preserved in the waterlogged peat, which is precisely why the wood survived. To understand the site, visit the Federseemuseum in Bad Buchau, a short ride to the north-west, which has reconstructed houses on stilts, finds from the moors of the region and a walkway out across the Federsee marshes, a lovely place with reeds, birds and wide skies.
Upper Swabia is gently rolling country between the Danube and Lake Constance, shaped by the glaciers of the last ice age, with moors, small lakes, forests and farmland. It is also baroque country: the Upper Swabian Baroque Route links the great monasteries and churches of the region. In Bad Schussenried, the former monastery has a library hall of great beauty, with a painted ceiling and carved figures, and nearby Steinhausen has a pilgrimage church often called the most beautiful village church in the world.
For riders, the area offers relaxed, scenic riding on small roads through villages, fields and woods, with gentle curves and good surfaces. Traffic is light outside the towns. It is a good place to unwind, and to link up with more demanding routes in the Allgäu, to the south-east, or the Swabian Jura, to the north. Lake Constance, with Bregenz and the Alps on its far shore, is about an hour away.
Bad Schussenried, a town of over eight thousand people two kilometres away, has fuel, shops and restaurants. The town has a brewery with a beer museum, and Upper Swabian food is hearty: try Maultaschen, large ravioli filled with meat and spinach, or Käsespätzle, egg noodles with cheese and fried onions. Late spring and early autumn are the loveliest seasons, when the meadows are green and the light is soft.