Uslar is where the Solling begins to feel like real country. The town sits at the western foot of that big, rounded upland, on the little Ahle stream not far from the Weser, and it has the unhurried look of a place that serves the farms and forests around it. The old centre has a handful of timbered houses, a church and a modest square, and that is about the extent of its showing off. Behind it, the forest rises in dark folds.
The Solling is an old, worn-down plateau of red sandstone, which gives the soil a rusty colour in ploughed fields and quarry cuts, and the sandstone has been quarried for centuries. Weser Renaissance buildings along the river use it for window frames and steps, and you will notice the warm red tone in villages as you ride through. The plateau is mostly beech and spruce, with wide clearings, and it forms part of a nature park that takes in both the Solling and the Vogler. Moorland and small streams run in the high part, and this is a place where black storks are said to nest and where red deer make their autumn noise.
The road up from Uslar is a proper climb by northern German standards, though not anything an Alpine rider would notice. It winds through woods in long, easy bends, with a steady gradient and good visibility, and the sun flickers through the branches. The surface is mostly sound. Because the plateau is high enough to catch weather, mist can drop in quickly and the temperature falls, so a spare layer is sensible even in late spring. In autumn the beeches go gold and copper, and the whole slope seems lit from within.
Uslar has about sixteen thousand people in its municipality, so fuel stations, supermarkets and a few bakeries and inns are available, and it is the sensible last place to stock up before the forest. Inside the Solling the villages are small and the services thin. Bodenfelde, down in the Weser valley, is the other nearby option. If you want to eat, local game dishes and sausage appear on inn menus in autumn, and the portions are generous enough to need a rest afterward.