Soltau is a working town on the western edge of the Lüneburg Heath, a place of around twenty thousand people on the little Böhme river, and a stop here is for fuel, a sandwich and a look at your map. I say that with affection. The riding you came here for is out on the heath and the Aller valley, and Soltau gives you the services to do it without worry. There are several filling stations on the through roads, supermarkets with decent bakery counters, and a pedestrian centre where you can sit outside and drink coffee on a sunny day without anybody asking you for anything.
It is also a town with an odd mix of roles. Its best-known attraction is an amusement park, the Heide Park, which pulls families in from Hamburg and Hanover every summer, and the signs for it appear on every road for miles. Outside the park season, and outside holidays, the traffic is mild. The town is in flat country at about sixty metres above sea level, and the land around it is a patchwork of pine plantation, farmland and the remains of heath, with the occasional dune. The soil is thin and sandy, and that is why heather and Scots pine have always done well here.
For a rider the approach from the south or east is much like the rest of the region: long straights through forest, gentle bends over streams and a lot of cyclists. Be careful with the animals. Roe deer cross these forest roads at dawn and dusk, and a bike does not survive a collision with one. In the autumn there is also the matter of mud and wet leaves where tractors have used the lanes, so slow down when the surface looks dark. The best seasons are late spring, when the birch and beech leaves are fresh, and September, when the light is low and the heath is still in colour.
If you need more than fuel, the smaller villages around Soltau, Neuenkirchen and Wietzendorf among them, have inns serving the usual heath dishes, such as lamb, asparagus in season, and plain cakes.