CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Out of Spreenhagen, one way: 495 km, roughly 8 h 18 in the saddle. It goes by way of near Letschin, near Chorin, Scenic stretch near Gransee and Breddin. It crosses from Germany into Poland - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
The ride follows Lusatia Lakes and Tagebau Views fuel gate → Lusatia Lakes and Tagebau for 76 km.
Spreenhagen is a scattered rural municipality south-east of Berlin, where the River Spree winds through forests and meadows between Fürstenwalde and the capital. The villages here are small and quiet, with old churches, farmhouses and modern homes for commuters, and the landscape is a typical Brandenburg mix of pine forests, wet meadows and lakes.
Read the complete High point near Spreenhagen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lusatia Lakes and Tagebau Views is where the day begins. Next is Food stop near Letschin.
Frederick the Great stands on a pedestal in Letschin, and the people of the Oderbruch have good reason to remember him. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Prussian king ordered the draining of this vast marshy floodplain of the Oder, a huge engineering project that created new farmland and villages for thousands of settlers. He is said to have declared that he had conquered a province in peace. The landscape today is a flat, fertile plain of fields, ditches and dykes, stretching to the Polish border.
Read the complete Food stop near Letschin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Food stop near Letschin is where this day stops to eat. Next is High point near Chorin.
Chorin Abbey rises out of the trees like a red brick cathedral that someone forgot to finish. Cistercian monks founded it in the thirteenth century as part of the German settlement of Brandenburg, and its towering west front is one of the finest examples of north German brick Gothic. After the Reformation it fell into ruin, and the Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel was among those who campaigned to save it in the nineteenth century. Today it hosts a well-known summer concert season and has a gentle, almost romantic air.
Read the complete High point near Chorin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 145 km into the recorded legs you reach High point near Chorin. Next is Scenic stretch near Gransee.
Gransee is one of the best-kept medieval towns in Brandenburg, still enclosed by almost the full ring of its brick walls, with gate towers and defensive turrets. In the middle stands the great brick Gothic church of St Mary, and on the market square a curious cast-iron monument designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel marks the spot where the coffin of Queen Louise of Prussia rested overnight in 1810 on its way to Berlin. Louise was hugely popular, and her early death caused national mourning.
Read the complete Scenic stretch near Gransee write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Scenic stretch near Gransee, about halfway. Next is Berlin motorcycle escapes return.
In August 1896, on a hill called the Gollenberg near the village of Stölln, a few kilometres south-east of the point, Otto Lilienthal lost control of his glider, fell about fifteen metres, and died of his injuries the next day. He had made hundreds of flights from these slopes, and his experiments laid the groundwork for the Wright brothers. Nearly a century later, in 1989, an Interflug Ilyushin airliner was landed on the grassy meadow at the foot of the same hill as a tribute, and it is still there, a strange and wonderful sight in the open countryside, now a small museum.
Read the complete Near Breddin, on the way back write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Berlin motorcycle escapes return sits at 313 km, about halfway. Next is Photo stop near Golzow.
South of Brandenburg an der Havel the land breaks into a quiet patchwork of pine forest, heath, small lakes and farm villages, the transition between the Havel lowlands and the Fläming hills. Golzow is one of those villages, a cluster of farmhouses and a church where you will rarely see more than a few cars. It is the sort of place where you stop because it is peaceful rather than because of any particular attraction.
Read the complete Photo stop near Golzow write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Photo stop near Golzow comes up about 362 km into the recorded legs. Next is Lusatia Lakes and Tagebau Views checkpoint 8.
Buch, on the far northern edge of Berlin, is a district shaped by medicine. In the early twentieth century, the city architect Ludwig Hoffmann built a series of large hospital complexes here, in a park-like setting outside the crowded city, and Buch has been a centre of hospitals and medical research ever since. Today it is home to the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine and a cluster of biotech companies, as well as a large hospital campus, and the old Hoffmann buildings, with their red-brick and stone façades, are still impressive.
Read the complete Near Buch write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lusatia Lakes and Tagebau Views checkpoint 8 closes the day.
Fuel stop in Spreenhagen → Food stop near Letschin is 76 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Food stop near Letschin → High point near Chorin is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
High point near Chorin → Scenic stretch near Gransee is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Scenic stretch near Gransee → Near Breddin, on the way back is 70 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Photo stop near Golzow → Near Buch is 133 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.