Peißenberg is a town on a hill, and the hill is the thing. The Hoher Peißenberg rises to just under a thousand metres, isolated from the Alps behind it, so that it stands like a lookout over the whole of the Pfaffenwinkel, the Priest's Corner, the pilgrim country between the Lech and the Loisach. From its top you see the lakes, the Ammergau mountains and the line of the Zugspitze in the distance. The road up is steep and short, with a good surface, and parking near the summit is limited.
On top stands a pilgrimage church, built in the early seventeenth century and one of the best known in Upper Bavaria, with a baroque interior. Next to it, there is also a weather station that has been recording since 1781, one of the oldest mountain weather stations in the world with an unbroken record, which today is operated by the German weather service. A beer garden near the top serves a view of the Alps along with a plate of local sausages. The stone terrace is windy and cool, so bring a jacket.
The town below carries a different history. Peißenberg was a coal-mining town, and the pits there worked for more than a century before the last one closed in 1971. The miners' colony and the mining museum are part of the town's memory, and you can see how the work made the place. Today it has twelve thousand inhabitants, petrol stations, supermarkets and a mixture of old and new, and it is the nearest source of fuel for a long way.
Polling, a few kilometres off, is a small village with a former Augustinian monastery that holds a library hall, a rococo room with a ceiling painted with allegories and tall shelves of old books, which is worth a stop if it is open. The riding in this corner of Bavaria is soft and rolling, with farmland, small lakes and views that open and close. Weekends bring cyclists and walkers, and in autumn the Föhn clears the air and the mountains seem near. Mornings are best, when the mist lies in the valleys and the hill rises out of it.