Barnim Forest and Werbellinsee

A 603 km loop

Open this ride in the planner →

Why this ride

A proper escape from Berlin motorcycle escapes with roads worth waking up for. Out of Kremmen and back again: 603 km, roughly 12 h 34 in the saddle. It goes by way of Konradshöhe, near Słubice, Scenic stretch near Wendisch Rietz and Schlieben. near Dreetz is the high point. The line favours views over speed.

Roadbook

1. Fuel stop near Kremmen fuel

   In 1412, on a causeway through the marshes near Kremmen, the forces of the new Hohenzollern rulers of Brandenburg fought the Dukes of Pomerania in a battle that marked the beginning of the Hohenzollern era, which would eventually lead to Prussia and the German Empire. The causeway, the Kremmer Damm, still crosses the wetland, and a memorial cross marks the site of the battle. Fontane described it in his travels, and the story is part of Brandenburg folklore.

   Kremmen is a small town on the edge of the Rhinluch, a vast wetland of meadows, ditches and peat bogs that stretches west towards the Ruppin lakes. The town's most charming feature is its barn quarter, the Scheunenviertel, a street of old timber-framed barns on the edge of town, built outside the walls to protect the town from fire. Many of the barns have been converted into restaurants, cafés and craft shops, making them a lovely place for a break.

   The riding here is relaxed and peaceful. The roads are flat, with long straights across the wetlands and gentle curves through the villages. Traffic is light, but the roads can be windy, and agricultural vehicles are common. In spring and autumn, cranes and geese gather in the wetlands, and the sound of their calls fills the air. Watch for cobbles in the villages and for trees close to the road.

   Fuel is most reliably found in Oranienburg or Velten, a short ride to the east and south. The Scheunenviertel offers coffee, cake and hearty Brandenburg dishes. The Barnim forests and the Werbellinsee lie to the north-east, with beech woods and clear lakes.

2. Near Konradshöhe finish

   On the north-western edge of Berlin, the city dissolves into water and woods. Around Konradshöhe and Heiligensee, villas and gardens run down to the shores of the Havel and the Tegeler See, Berlin's second-largest lake, with islands, sailing boats and a long promenade at Alt-Tegel. Across the water, the Tegel forest stretches away, a dense area of pine and oak that hides walking paths and small lakes.

   Schloss Tegel, on the southern shore of the lake, was the family home of the Humboldt brothers, Wilhelm, the linguist and educational reformer, and Alexander, the naturalist and explorer, whose travels in South America changed the way people saw the natural world. The house, remodelled by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, is still privately owned by descendants, and the family burial ground lies in the park. On the other side of the forest, the old Tegel airport, closed in 2020, is slowly being transformed into a new urban quarter.

   The rides that finish here come back from the Barnim and the Märkische Schweiz, regions of forests, lakes and rolling hills north-east of Berlin. The Werbellinsee, a long, clear lake in the Schorfheide forest, may be the loveliest lake in Brandenburg, and the Märkische Schweiz around Buckow is a small area of hills, valleys and lakes, where Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel had a summer house that is now a museum. The roads there are winding and quiet, with cobbled sections and avenues of old trees.

   Coming back into Berlin, the northern suburbs are generally calmer than the south and east, and the roads along the Havel are pleasant, lined with trees and houses. Fuel is on the main roads, and beer gardens and restaurants along the lake shores, where you can sit with a cold drink and watch the boats. Summer evenings by the Havel are long and gentle, a very Berlin way to finish a ride.

3. Photo stop near Słubice photo

   Until 1945, Słubice was the Dammvorstadt, the suburb of Frankfurt an der Oder on the east bank of the river. When the border was redrawn along the Oder after the war, the town became Polish, its German population was expelled, and it was resettled by Poles, many of them themselves displaced from lands further east. Today, a bridge links the two towns, and the border is open, with people crossing freely to shop, work and study. The Collegium Polonicum, a joint institution of the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt and a Polish university, stands near the bridge as a symbol of reconciliation.

   For many Germans, Słubice is a shopping destination. The bazaar near the border sells cheap cigarettes, clothes and souvenirs, and fuel is usually cheaper on the Polish side, so many riders fill up here. The town also has restaurants serving Polish dishes, such as pierogi, żurek soup and bigos, at prices lower than in Germany.

   The Oder itself is a wide, slow river, with meadows and floodplain forests on both banks, and the views from the bridge are lovely, especially in the evening. The riding around Słubice is flat and open, with roads along the river and through the fields and forests. Traffic can be heavy near the border crossing, and the roads in Poland may have different speed limits and rules, including the requirement to ride with dipped headlights at all times.

   Słubice has plenty of fuel stations, shops and restaurants. A stop for a meal and a full tank is a classic part of a ride to the Oder. The Barnim forests and the Werbellinsee lie to the north-west, back across the border in Germany.

4. Scenic stretch near Wendisch Rietz scenic

   Brandenburg likes to call the Scharmützelsee its sea, the Märkisches Meer, and from the southern shore at Wendisch Rietz you can see why. The lake stretches away for about ten kilometres towards Bad Saarow, wide enough that on a windy day it throws up proper waves. Wendisch Rietz sits at the southern tip, with a harbour, a beach, holiday homes and a channel linking the lake to the Glubigsee and the waterways beyond. The name hints at the Slavic Wends who lived here before German settlement.

   The riding around the lake is a favourite with Berlin bikers on summer weekends. The road along the western shore runs through pine forest with glimpses of water, and the roads north towards the Rauen hills add a little rise and fall, rare in this flat region. Up in those hills lie the Markgrafensteine, two huge granite boulders dragged here from Scandinavia by Ice Age glaciers; one of them was split in the nineteenth century to make the enormous granite bowl that now stands in front of the Altes Museum in Berlin.

   Weekends bring traffic, cyclists and police checks, so the busiest stretches are best taken calmly. Weekdays are far quieter. Watch for sand blown onto the road at forest edges and for wild boar at dusk. In the villages, cobbles still appear.

   Wendisch Rietz has cafés, ice cream and fish restaurants by the harbour in season. For fuel and a wider choice, Storkow, Bad Saarow and Beeskow are all within easy reach. Bad Saarow, at the other end of the lake, is an elegant old spa town where Maxim Gorky and other writers stayed in the 1920s, and its thermal baths remain a draw.

5. Near Schlieben, on the way back swim

   The Elbe-Elster district, in the far south of Brandenburg, is a quiet, sparsely populated land of forests, heath, farmland and small towns, between the Elbe and the Black Elster rivers. Schlieben, a small town on a low hill, stands in the middle of this landscape, and the countryside near it is a place to pause on the way back towards Berlin, especially on a hot day.

   To the east lies the former lignite mining area of Lusatia, where decades of open-cast mining left vast craters that are now being flooded to create new lakes. At Lichterfeld, near Finsterwalde, the Bergheider See was formed from one of these mines, and on its shore stands the F60, a gigantic overburden conveyor bridge, more than five hundred metres long, which has been preserved as a visitor attraction and is sometimes called the lying Eiffel Tower. The lake has bathing spots, and the contrast between the clean water and the massive steel structure is surreal. Other former mining lakes in the area have also been opened for swimming, though some are still off-limits because the banks are unstable, so always obey the signs.

   To the south-west, Doberlug-Kirchhain has a Cistercian monastery church founded in the twelfth century and a Renaissance castle, both beautifully restored, and they make a worthwhile stop if you have time. The forests around Schlieben are mostly pine, on sandy soils, with heathland in places, and they smell of resin in the heat.

   The roads here are quiet and flat to gently rolling, often lined with trees, with long, straight stretches through the forests and cobbled sections in some villages. Schlieben itself is small, so services are limited; fuel and supermarkets are easier to find in Doberlug-Kirchhain, Herzberg or Finsterwalde. The ride back to Berlin is long but easy, through the forests of the Dahme-Spreewald region, with little traffic outside the main roads.

6. Food stop near Ziesar food

   Ziesar was once the home of bishops. For several centuries, the Bishops of Brandenburg made the castle here their main residence, and the brick keep and the chapel with its medieval wall paintings still stand. The castle now houses a museum on medieval Christianity and episcopal life, a surprising treasure for a small town of a couple of thousand people on the edge of the Fläming.

   The landscape around Ziesar is the transition between the flat Havel lowlands and the low, forested hills of the Fläming to the south. The Fläming takes its name from Flemish settlers who came in the twelfth century to farm the land and drain the marshes, and their villages, with brick churches and fieldstone walls, still dot the countryside. The forests are mainly pine, with some oak and beech, and in spring the fields are bright yellow with rapeseed.

   Riding here is gentle and relaxing. The roads are quiet, with long straights and gentle bends, and the occasional hill gives a view over the surrounding countryside. Some country roads are narrow and lined with trees, and cobbles still appear in villages. The A2 motorway passes nearby, convenient for a fast return to Berlin or a quick escape west towards Magdeburg.

   Ziesar has a few shops and places to eat, but it is small, so for a full range of services the larger towns of Brandenburg an der Havel or Genthin are the reliable choice. A visit to the castle makes a good break, and the town has the quiet air of a place that once mattered more than it does now, which is part of its charm. From here, routes lead north towards the Barnim forests and the Werbellinsee, a very different landscape of beech woods and deep lakes.

7. High point near Dreetz pass

   You top out here; the road stops climbing.

8. Back to Barnim Forest finish

   Neuruppin is where Fontane was born, and the whole region still feels like one of his books. Theodor Fontane, the great novelist and travel writer of nineteenth-century Prussia, came into the world here in 1819 and later spent years walking through the Mark Brandenburg, recording its castles, lakes and villages in his Wanderings, a work that made the sandy north a place of literary pilgrimage.

   Neuruppin, a town of about thirty-two thousand, was rebuilt in a grid after a great fire in 1787, and that planned layout, with wide streets and classical houses, has a calm elegance. The architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who designed much of Berlin, was born here in 1781, and his statue stands near the church. Lake Ruppin, a long narrow lake, runs along the town's edge, with a lakeside promenade and a boat service in summer. Kremmen, a smaller town to the south-east, has an old medieval wall and a long street of brick houses, and Lindow lies among woods and lakes.

   The label points to the Barnim Forest and Werbellinsee, which lie to the east, and the ride covers much of the same country, passing woods, lakes and long quiet roads. Surfaces are generally good, though cobbles appear in the villages, and tree-lined avenues are common. In autumn, mist lies over the lakes in the morning, and cranes call from the fields. Deer, wild boar and the occasional elk can be on the road at night.

   Kremmen has fuel and a few places to eat, and Neuruppin has a full range of services. Local specialities include smoked fish from the lakes and Ruppin's famous picture sheets, colourful prints made in the nineteenth century. A late afternoon walk along the lake at Neuruppin, with the light turning gold, is a pleasant way to finish a ride.

Where this sits

Rides near here