Berlin · Ruppiner Lakes and Rheinsberg Palace

Quiet northbound roads, palace stop and lake air instead of ring-road noise.

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Why this ride

Quiet northbound roads, palace stop and lake air instead of ring-road noise. Out of Oranienburg and back again: 195 km, roughly 3 h 22 in the saddle. On the way it passes Neuruppin lakefront, Rheinsberg palace stop and Stechlinsee water stop.

Roadbook

1. Oranienburg fuel gate fuel

   Oranienburg is a town on the Havel river, a short way north of Berlin, and it carries two very different histories side by side. On one side there is the palace, built in the seventeenth century for Louise Henriette of Orange, the Dutch-born wife of the Elector of Brandenburg, who gave the town its name. It was the first baroque palace in Brandenburg, and its Dutch influence is seen in the proportions and brick. The town became known as Oranienburg, the castle of Orange, and the palace now houses a museum and gardens.

   On the other side is a darker chapter. In 1936 the Nazi regime opened the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at the town's edge, and tens of thousands of prisoners died there. The site is now a memorial and museum, and a visit is sober, serious and well worth the time. Many people combine it with a trip from Berlin, and the surrounding town carries the memory in quiet ways. Allow a few hours and treat the visit with the gravity it deserves.

   As a starting point for a ride into the Ruppiner Land, this is a handy exit from the capital. North of the town, the roads fall into a rhythm of straight, tree-lined avenues, a typical feature of Brandenburg, with old chestnuts, limes and cherries standing at the roadside. Sandy soil, pine plantations and glittering lakes fill the landscape, and the pace is calm. Surfaces are generally good, though some are patched, and avenues can be dappled with light that hides potholes. Traffic is light on weekdays and busy on summer weekends as Berliners head for the water. Spring and early autumn are pleasantly mild.

   The ride continues to Neuruppin, the home town of the writer Theodor Fontane, and on to Rheinsberg, where Frederick the Great spent happy years as crown prince in a small lakeside palace. Oranienburg has fuel stations, a supermarket and cafes, and the suburban train line to Berlin makes it easy to leave a car. Leegebruch, a smaller town nearby, has basic services. Top up here before heading out, as pumps thin out in the forest.

2. Neuruppin lakefront food

   Neuruppin is where Theodor Fontane was born, in 1819, in the pharmacy his father ran on the main square, and he began his famous walking tours of Brandenburg with the county around the town. The architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who would shape so much of Berlin, was born here too, in 1781. For a town of thirty-two thousand people, that is quite a pair of local boys.

   The town lies on the long, narrow Ruppiner See, a lake that stretches several kilometres north-west, with a promenade, boat landings and cafes along the shore. It is a calm, handsome town with a grid of wide streets, and the lakefront is the natural place for lunch. Most restaurants have terraces overlooking the water, and fish is the safe choice: zander, smoked eel or fried perch, with potatoes and a cold beer or a glass of local wine.

   The riding to and from Neuruppin is gentle, through the lake district of the Ruppiner Land, with pine forest, reed beds and small villages. The roads are well surfaced and the traffic is light outside the town, and the lake views appear in fragments between the trees. If you want a longer day, Rheinsberg, with its palace on a lake, lies about twenty-five kilometres north. It was the home of the young Frederick the Great when he was crown prince, and the place where he is said to have been happiest.

   Practical matters are easy: fuel and supplies are available in town, and parking near the lake is straightforward on weekdays. At weekends in summer, the waterfront fills with families and cyclists, so go early if you want a table.

   The light on the lake in the late afternoon is lovely, a soft silver that suits the calm of the town. Sit with a coffee, look across the water and think of the boy from the pharmacy who ended up writing the great novels of the Mark.

3. Rheinsberg palace stop sight

   Rheinsberg is where a prince became a king, or at least learned to think like one. Frederick, the Prussian crown prince later called the Great, spent four happy years here, from 1736 to 1740, in a palace on the shore of the Grienericksee, away from his violent father, with books, flute music, friends and the philosophers he corresponded with. He had the architect Knobelsdorff remodel the building, and the result is a pale, graceful Baroque and early rococo palace, with a double-winged courtyard facing the water. Later he spoke of this period as the happiest of his life.

   The palace was also the setting for a famous light novel. In 1912, the young journalist Kurt Tucholsky published Rheinsberg, a Picture Book for Lovers, a little comedy about a weekend away that became a classic. Today the palace houses a museum with its restored interiors, and the park has lawns, trees, a long terrace by the lake and a number of small buildings and sculptures. The little town, with a population of about nine thousand, has a cobbled centre and a few pretty streets.

   For riders, Rheinsberg is the highlight of a gentle lakes ride. The roads from Neuruppin and Lindow run through avenues of old trees, beside lakes with swans and reeds, and through quiet villages. The surface is generally good, with some rough patches near the village edges, and the bends are mild. Traffic is light except on summer weekends, when cyclists and day trippers arrive. In spring, the avenues are dusted with blossom, and in autumn the woods turn gold. Mist often lies on the water in the early morning.

   Practically, the town has a fuel station, supermarkets, bakeries and cafes, and several restaurants near the palace serve fish from the lakes and traditional Brandenburg dishes. Parking for motorbikes is easy near the palace entrance, and a stroll through the park is a pleasant way to take a break. Lindow, with about three thousand people, is the next town in one direction and has a small fuel station, but check hours. An afternoon here, with a coffee in the park and the lake shining, is worth the detour.

4. Stechlinsee water stop swim

   Few lakes in Germany have as strong a hold on the imagination as the Stechlinsee. It is deep, nearly seventy metres, and so clear that you can see far down through the water, with a bed of white sand and a ring of beech forest around the shore. Fontane made it the setting for his last novel, Der Stechlin, in which the lake is said to stir whenever something great happens in the world, a kind of seismograph of history. It is a beautiful idea, and standing on the shore you can almost believe it.

   The lake lies north of Berlin, in the lake district around Fürstenberg, and its clean water is partly an accident of history. For decades, East Germany ran its first nuclear power station on the shore of a neighbouring lake, using Stechlinsee water for cooling, and the plant shut in 1990. Today the lake is a protected nature reserve and a research site for freshwater ecology, and its water is among the cleanest in the region.

   Swimming is possible at the village of Neuglobsow, where a public beach has a jetty and a kiosk, and the water is cold and crystalline. The village also has a small glass museum recalling the glassworks that once operated nearby, and a few cafes serving smoked fish and cake. In autumn the beeches turn copper, and a walk around part of the lake is a pleasure.

   The ride here is mostly through forest on quiet roads, with gentle curves and occasional cobbles in the villages. Be careful on wet leaves in autumn and for wild boar and deer at dawn and dusk. Fuel is available in Fürstenberg, about eight kilometres away, and it is wise to fill up before you head out into the forest.

   Come on a weekday in early summer or in September, when the water is warm enough to swim and the crowds have thinned. Sit by the water and listen to the wind in the beeches. It is a place that rewards stillness.

5. Back to Oranienburg finish

   Back at Oranienburg. That is the ride.

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