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: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 418 km round trip from Hannover - roughly 7 h in the saddle. It goes by way of Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey, Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of, Mines of Rammelsberg and back through Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 13 km this is German Timber Frame Road Central Section, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Hannover does not seek attention, which is part of its character. The capital of Lower Saxony, with about half a million people, is a flat, green, practical city on the Leine river, famous for its trade fairs, and for speaking what Germans consider the purest standard German. Large parts of the centre were destroyed in the Second World War, and the rebuilding is mostly plain, but there are fine things inside it: the Herrenhausen Gardens, a baroque garden of clipped hedges and fountains, the Maschsee, a big lake laid out in the 1930s where locals sail and jog, and the new town hall, a copper-domed building from 1913 with a lift that rises inside the dome.
Read the complete Hannover write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hannover is where the day begins. Next is Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey.
Corvey sits in a loop of the Weser just outside Höxter, a baroque abbey palace set among meadows with the wooded hills of the Solling and the Weser Uplands closing in around it. The baroque part is handsome but not why people come. Hidden behind it, forming the entrance to the church, is a westwork built between 873 and 885, and it is one of the very few Carolingian buildings in the world still standing more or less as it was built.
Read the complete Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey comes up 51 km in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
102 km in you reach Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey. Next is Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of.
Goslar is a small city at the northern edge of the Harz, and it is hard to overstate how much money and power sat here in the Middle Ages. The Rammelsberg hill, just south of the town, held a vast body of silver, lead, copper and zinc ore, and mining went on for about a thousand years, until the mine closed in 1988. The Ottonian and Salian emperors built their palace in Goslar because the silver paid for it. The imperial palace, the Kaiserpfalz, still stands in a big, over-restored form on the edge of the old town. UNESCO listed the mine and the old town together in 1992, and in 2010 the Upper Harz water system was added to the same site.
Read the complete Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of, about halfway. Next is Mines of Rammelsberg.
The two belong to the same story. The Upper Harz was one of the great silver and lead mining districts of Europe, and its engineers built an astonishing network of ponds, ditches and tunnels to bring water to the wheels that drove the pumps and hoists. That water system is part of the UNESCO listing, which took in Rammelsberg and Goslar in 1992 and was later extended to cover the Upper Harz. Today the ponds look like natural lakes, and it takes a moment to realise that someone dug every channel by hand.
Read the complete Mines of Rammelsberg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mines of Rammelsberg sits at 203 km, about halfway. Next is back through Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of comes up 254 km in. Next is back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
305 km in you reach back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey. Next is back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey, late in the day. Next is Hannover.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hannover write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 418 km.
Hannover → Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey is 95 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey → Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of is 95 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of → Mines of Rammelsberg is 13 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mines of Rammelsberg → back through Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of is 13 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of → back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey is 95 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey → Hannover is 95 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.