Stolberg is a tiny half-timbered town of about fourteen hundred people in a narrow valley on the southern edge of the Harz, so well preserved that people often call it a museum in itself, with houses leaning against each other along the main street and a castle on the hill above. It was the seat of the counts of Stolberg, whose line ran for centuries, and the birthplace of Thomas Müntzer, the preacher and radical leader of the Peasants' War of 1525, who was executed after the battle of Frankenhausen not far to the south.
The place is on a quiet road through the Südharz, which is an unusual landscape of limestone and gypsum karst, with caves, sinkholes and clear streams, among beech woods and orchards. Rottleberode, a short way along, is a small village that has a show cave, the Heimkehle, one of the largest gypsum caves in Germany, with a lake inside. On the hill above Stolberg stands the Josephskreuz, a wooden cross-shaped tower designed in the 1830s and built to a plan by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, which gives views across the hills on a clear day.
For riders the roads here are narrow, winding and often empty, and the old roads climbing from the valley give a sense of the Harz without the weekend crowds of the main roads. Surface quality varies, with some patches and gravel on the bends, and the climbs are short but steep, so it is no place for hurry. The nearest bigger towns with fuel are Nordhausen and Sangerhausen, each some twenty to thirty kilometres away, so fill the tank before you turn off.
Sangerhausen has a famous rose garden, the Europa-Rosarium, with thousands of varieties, a lovely detour in June. The area is also known for its sausages and for Harz honey, and the villages have small inns with simple, filling food. Spring brings blossom on the orchards, autumn a haze of woodsmoke and yellow beech leaves. Mornings in the valley can be cold and misty, but the sun quickly gets into the hills.