German Timber Frame Road Central Section from Stade

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Stade

   Stade is a Hanseatic town that most riders cross without noticing, which is a shame, because it is one of the better-looking small cities in the north German lowlands. It sits on the Schwinge, a sluggish little river that reaches the Elbe a few kilometres away, and the old harbour basin in the middle of town still has a wooden crane and a row of gabled brick and timber houses leaning over the water. Sweden held the town for most of the later seventeenth century, and it was a serious military post in those years, which is why the fortifications and the ring of moats around the centre are so well preserved.

   Read the complete Stade write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Stade is where the day begins. Next is Celle.

2. 2. Celle

   Celle is a town that looks like it has been preserved in a jar. More than four hundred half-timbered houses, with carved beams, painted inscriptions and crooked upper storeys, line the streets of the old centre, and the whole place has survived with very little damage because it escaped bombing in the Second World War. About seventy-one thousand people live here, on the banks of the Aller, at the southern edge of the Luneburg Heath.

   Read the complete Celle write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Celle comes up about 155 km into the recorded legs. Next is Goslar.

3. 3. Goslar

   Goslar is the town where Harz mining became legend. For more than a thousand years, miners dug silver, lead, copper and zinc from the Rammelsberg hill just outside the town, and the wealth built an imperial city. Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire held court at the Kaiserpfalz, the great palace hall beside the old town, which was built in the eleventh century and rebuilt in the nineteenth. The Rammelsberg mine closed in 1988, after a thousand years of work, and UNESCO listed the mine and the old town in 1992, later adding the water management system of the Upper Harz.

   Read the complete Goslar write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 274 km into the recorded legs you reach Goslar. Next is Quedlinburg.

4. 4. Quedlinburg

   Quedlinburg is one of the best preserved medieval towns in Germany, with roughly thirteen hundred half-timbered houses, a number that is hard to believe until you have walked its streets. The whole old town, with the castle hill and the abbey church, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1994. The houses date from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and many have been restored with care.

   Read the complete Quedlinburg write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Quedlinburg, late in the day. Next is Wernigerode.

5. 5. Wernigerode

   Wernigerode likes to call itself the colourful town of the Harz, and it earns the title. The old town, at the foot of the mountains, has half-timbered houses in every shade of red, yellow, blue and green, carved with figures and inscriptions, and a Gothic town hall with two slim towers that looks like a toy. One of the houses is among the smallest in Germany, squeezed into a gap between two larger buildings, and visitors queue to look at it.

   Read the complete Wernigerode write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Wernigerode. That is the ride.