Torfhaus is where the Harz stops pretending to be a gentle hill country. The settlement is little more than a cluster of buildings strung along the B4 at somewhere around 800 metres, between Bad Harzburg on the northern edge and Braunlage to the south, and it stands on open moorland where the spruce forest gives way to bog and wind. On a clear day the Brocken, at 1,141 metres the highest summit in northern Germany, stands over the horizon as a bald, slightly sinister dome, and it is the reason most people stop here. On a bad day you will see nothing at all, because this is one of the foggiest and wettest corners of the country.
The climb from Bad Harzburg is the part a rider remembers. The B4 leaves the town in a series of long, well-built bends through beech and then spruce forest, and the temperature falls with every few hundred metres. In early spring there can still be snow beside the road when it is dry and warm in the lowlands, so check the weather and carry a layer. Surfaces are good, but this is a popular road for cars, camper vans and other bikes, and a Saturday afternoon in summer can mean a slow convoy behind a lorry. A weekday morning, or early evening when the day-trippers have left, is when you get the road for yourself.
Torfhaus has a National Park information centre and a few places for coffee and sausage, and a short marked walk across the moor to a lookout point. Goethe walked up to the Brocken from here in the winter of 1777, which is why the main path to the summit is still called the Goetheweg. The Brocken has a long literary reputation: in the old stories it is where witches gather on Walpurgis Night at the end of April, and you can still buy witch dolls at every kiosk in the Harz. The nearest proper fuel is down in Bad Harzburg or in Braunlage, so do not count on filling a tank on the hill, and bring a warm drink. The wind up here finds every gap in your jacket.