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.
Pine forest, Bodden water and a proper sea-air day. An 87 km loop that starts and ends near Ribnitz-Damgarten, about 1 h 46 of riding. It goes by way of Ahrenshoop coast, Prerow forest edge and Barth Bodden roads. It keeps close to the shore for long stretches.
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 32 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Ribnitz-Damgarten is really two towns that were stitched together by a river. The Recknitz, sluggish and brown as it slides toward the Saaler Bodden lagoon, was for centuries a border: Ribnitz belonged to Mecklenburg, Damgarten to Pomerania, and the two places looked across the water with different rulers and different habits. They merged only in 1950, and the bridge that joins them is still the most important thing in town. It sits on the old main road to the Baltic coast, at the neck of the Fischland-Darß-Zingst peninsula, so nearly everyone riding toward the beaches has to pass through.
Read the complete Ribnitz-Damgarten write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Next is Ahrenshoop coast.
Ahrenshoop sits on the narrow neck of land where the Fischland meets the Darß, a thin strip of dune, forest and reed between the Baltic Sea and the Bodden lagoons. It was a fishing village until the 1890s, when painters arrived, drawn by the light and the quiet, and settled to form an artists' colony that has lasted more than a century. The reed-thatched cottages, the small galleries and the Kunstkaten, little art studios in old houses, are the legacy, and the village still has an easy, creative feel. On a grey day the sea and sky merge into silver, and on a clear one the horizon is a hard, bright line.
Read the complete Ahrenshoop coast write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ahrenshoop coast comes up about 21 km into the recorded legs. Next is Prerow forest edge.
At Prerow the road meets the Darß forest, and the sense of being at the end of something sets in. The village is a former seafarers' settlement, with long, low houses with reed roofs and a church that holds model ships hanging from the ceiling, a custom that tells you how many men from this coast went to sea. Beyond the village a protected national park begins, a wide wilderness of forest, dune and bog that is among the wildest stretches of the German Baltic. The old forest has trees bent by wind into strange shapes, and the ground is carpeted in moss and fern.
Read the complete Prerow forest edge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 39 km into the recorded legs you reach Prerow forest edge. Next is Barth Bodden roads.
Barth is a harbour town on the Bodden, the shallow lagoons that lie behind the Darß peninsula, and it has the unhurried quality of a place that has been a port for centuries. Its centre is a pleasant mix of brick buildings, a church with a tall tower and a waterfront lined with boats, and from the quay you can look across the water to flat green shores and reed beds. The town's nickname, Vinetastadt, refers to a legend of a lost city called Vineta that was swallowed by the sea, and the story has become part of the town's charm.
Read the complete Barth Bodden roads write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Barth Bodden roads, late in the day. Next is Back to Ribnitz-Damgarten.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ribnitz-Damgarten write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Back to Ribnitz-Damgarten. That is the ride.
This Ahrenshoop coast → Prerow forest edge stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.
Prerow forest edge → Barth Bodden roads is the reward section in Rostock. 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.