CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Scenery first, traffic last, with checkpoints that make sense on a bike. 687 km round from Zehdenick - plan on about 14 h 19 of riding. On the way it passes near Sandau, Trossin and Scenic stretch in Golßen. The climb of the day is near Neuruppin. Much of it runs through woodland.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 63 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Next is High point near Neuruppin.
Two of the most important figures in Prussian culture were born in Neuruppin: the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1781 and the novelist Theodor Fontane in 1819. Fontane went on to write the Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg, a multi-volume account of his travels through the region, and the first volume opens with the county of Ruppin. Reading even a few pages before riding these roads gives them a depth they might otherwise lack.
Read the complete Food stop near Neuruppin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out here; the road stops climbing. Next is Food stop near Sandau.
Sandau is one of the smallest towns in Germany, a cluster of houses and a big Romanesque brick church on the east bank of the Elbe in Saxony-Anhalt, opposite the meadows that stretch towards Havelberg. A cable ferry crosses the river here, a slow and peaceful way to reach the other bank, and the experience of standing on the deck with your bike, watching the broad, brown river slide past, is a fine reason to come.
Read the complete Food stop near Sandau write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
A break here. Next is Berlin motorcycle escapes return.
Pine, sand and silence: the Dübener Heide is one of the larger forests of central Germany, a broad plateau of heath and woodland between the Elbe and the Mulde. Trossin lies on its eastern edge, a small village surrounded by fields and forest, a few kilometres from Dommitzsch, where the Elbe flows slowly past meadows and old willows.
Read the complete Trossin, on the way back write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Berlin motorcycle escapes return, about halfway. Next is Scenic stretch in Golßen.
Scenic stretch in Golßen sits at 393 km, about halfway. Next is Photo stop near Lieberose.
South of Lieberose, a wide expanse of open sand and heath stretches away under the sky, so bare in places that it has been nicknamed the Lieberose desert. For decades, this was a Soviet military training area, where tanks churned the ground and fires burned the forest. After the troops left in the 1990s, the land was left to nature, and it has become a refuge for wildlife, including wolves, which returned to Germany around the turn of the millennium and have established packs in the region.
Read the complete Photo stop near Lieberose write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Photo stop near Lieberose comes up 491 km in. Next is Dahme-Heideseen Backroads checkpoint 8.
Dahme-Heideseen Backroads checkpoint 8 closes the day. Next is Back to Dahme-Heideseen.
Zehdenick is a small town on the Havel in the north of Brandenburg, and it is tied to a thing most people would not think about, bricks. In the nineteenth century, the clay pits around the town fed hundreds of brickworks that shipped their product by barge down the Havel to build Berlin, and much of the capital's tenement-blocks came from here. When the pits were abandoned they flooded, turning the district into a landscape of small lakes and channels. The Ziegeleipark at Mildenberg, a few kilometres south, preserves a ring kiln and machinery, and gives an honest picture of the industry.
Read the complete Dahme-Heideseen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to Dahme-Heideseen. That is the ride.
Treat High point near Neuruppin → Food stop near Sandau as bend craft. Brake early, look high through the turn, and keep throttle changes gentle. It is more satisfying to link ten clean bends than rescue one silly one.
Food stop near Sandau → Trossin, on the way back is the logistics leg. Watch junctions, villages and speed changes, then let the roadbook do its job: move you out of the clutter without spending your best attention too early.
Scenic stretch in Golßen → Photo stop near Lieberose is the reward section in Berlin motorcycle escapes. Look through the bends, use legal pull-offs for photos and keep a little margin for tractors, cyclists and damp shade. The best ride here is smooth, not noisy.
Photo stop near Lieberose → Hermsdorf is shade riding: beautiful, cooler and sometimes slick. Expect damp patches, leaves, gravel and wildlife where the trees meet the road.