CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Normal visitor access to Wilsede and Wilseder Berg is on foot, bicycle or horse-drawn carriage. Select edge parking, recalculate the road journey and treat the core as an optional off-bike visit. Special permits are not assumed.
The original checkpoints have not been silently moved. Choose parking in the planner and calculate a new route before navigation.
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.
From Buchholz in der Nordheide it runs 517 km to Rellingen; allow about 8 h 07 of riding. The stops in between: Wilsede heath core, Lüneburg old town meal stop, Elbe marsh and Buchholz. Back roads rather than main roads, where the map allows. Normal visitor access to Wilsede and Wilseder Berg is on foot, bicycle or horse-drawn carriage. Select edge parking, recalculate the road journey and treat the core as an optional off-bike visit. Special permits are not assumed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 50 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Buchholz in der Nordheide is not a place that anyone writes songs about, but it is a useful one. It sits on the southern edge of the Hamburg metropolitan area, where the suburbs give way to heath and pine forest, and it is the town where the Lüneburg Heath begins for anyone coming out of the city. With about thirty-seven thousand people it has everything: fuel, supermarkets, cafés and a station, and it is a sensible place to begin or end a ride from Hamburg.
Read the complete Buchholz fuel gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Buchholz is where the day begins. Next is Wilsede heath core.
Few places in northern Germany are as carefully protected from people like us as Wilsede. The village sits in the middle of the Lüneburg Heath nature reserve, one of the oldest in the country, and it is closed to motor traffic. Bikes included. The sandy lanes leading in are for walkers, cyclists and horse-drawn carriages, and the car parks on the edge, at places like Undeloh and Niederhaverbeck, are where you leave the machine. Take it as a gift rather than a punishment. A short walk in boots, after hours on the saddle, is exactly the right pace for this landscape.
Read the complete Wilsede heath core write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Normal visitor access to Wilsede and Wilseder Berg is on foot, bicycle or horse-drawn carriage. Select edge parking, recalculate the road journey and treat the core as an optional off-bike visit. Special permits are not assumed.
Lüneburg got rich on salt, and the evidence is on every street corner. For a thousand years brine was pumped up from under the town and boiled down into what the Hanseatic merchants called white gold, then carted along the old Salt Road to Lübeck and shipped across the Baltic to preserve herring. The money built brick gables of tremendous height and swagger, a town hall with rooms that are still painted and carved to dazzle, and a harbour on the little Ilmenau river with a wooden crane that hauled barrels onto barges. The old crane is still there and worth a look.
Read the complete Lüneburg old town meal stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
A break here. Next is Elbe marsh return.
South of Hamburg the Elbe loosens into marsh, flat and open to the sky, with the river kept in place by a long dike that you can ride along or beside. The land behind it sits below the level of the high tide, and the old farms stand on little mounds, their fruit trees and thatch looking oddly protective. This is the Elbmarsch, close to the Vier- und Marschlande, and the horizon is made of sky.
Read the complete Elbe marsh return write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Elbe marsh return, early in the day. Next is Back to Buchholz.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Buchholz fuel gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Back to Buchholz. That is the ride. Next is Hamburg north-west edge.
Rellingen and Halstenbek lie on the north-western rim of Hamburg, in the Pinneberg district, and for anyone heading toward the North Sea they are the last of the city before the land opens out. This is tree-nursery country: Halstenbek and its neighbours form one of the largest centres for growing trees and shrubs in Europe, and in summer the fields are filled with orderly rows of young oaks, beeches, rhododendrons and roses, which gives the district a clean and scented feel.
Read the complete Hamburg north-west edge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The day opens at Hamburg north-west edge. Next is Itzehoe.
Itzehoe does not have a famous skyline, and that is rather the point. It is a solid town of about thirty thousand on the Stör river in the flat marshland of Schleswig-Holstein, and its job in this ride is that of a gate, the last reliable fuel and breakfast before the open country of the North Sea coast. The town sits some sixty kilometres northwest of Hamburg, and the name goes far back, with a fortress called Esesfeld said to have been built here in the early ninth century during the wars of Charlemagne against the Saxons.
Read the complete Itzehoe fuel gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fill up here — 260 km left and no pump marked after this. Next is Husum food stop.
Theodor Storm called Husum the grey town by the sea, and he meant it kindly. The poet and novelist, who was born in the town in 1817, wrote about the dykes, the fog and the wide, grey skies of the North Frisian coast, and the phrase has stuck. His house is a museum, and his novella The Rider on the White Horse, about a dyke-builder fighting the sea, is the great story of this coast.
Read the complete Husum food stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Somewhere to get off the bike, about 326 km into the recorded legs. Next is St. Peter-Ording beach edge, 52 km on.
The beach at St. Peter-Ording is so wide that the sea is sometimes a long walk away. The sand stretches for about twelve kilometres along the west coast of the Eiderstedt peninsula, up to two kilometres wide at low tide, and is one of the broadest in Germany. The restaurants on the beach stand on tall wooden stilts, like something from a fairy tale, because the tide and storm surges can cover the sand.
Read the complete St. Peter-Ording beach edge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
St. Peter-Ording beach edge sits at 417 km, late in the day. Next is Eider barrage viewpoint.
The Eider barrage is a piece of engineering that most people drive across without noticing, which is a pity. It closes the mouth of the Eider river near Tönning, on the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein, with a line of huge steel gates that stay open for the tide and slam shut when a storm surge threatens. It was built in the years after the great North Sea flood of 1962, finished in the early 1970s, and it shortened the dike line along the coast by a considerable margin while keeping the Eider's estuary alive for ships and wildlife.
Read the complete Eider barrage viewpoint write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Eider barrage viewpoint comes up about 386 km into the recorded legs. Next is Büsum harbour stop.
Büsum is where Dithmarschen meets the North Sea, a small resort and fishing port that spent a few centuries as an island before the sea gave up and the land joined it to the mainland in the sixteenth century. These days it is a cheerful and slightly salty place, full of day-trippers and holidaymakers, with a harbour that still has a working fleet of shrimp cutters. The little grey shrimp, known locally as Krabben, are the thing to eat here: sold from stalls on the quay in paper cones or stuffed into a bread roll, with the smell of diesel and seaweed thrown in free.
Read the complete Büsum harbour stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 407 km into the recorded legs you reach Büsum harbour stop. Next is Back to Hamburg.
Pinneberg, Halstenbek and Rellingen lie just north-west of Hamburg, and between them they make up one of the largest tree-growing regions in Europe. For miles on end the fields are filled with rows of young trees, shrubs, roses and rhododendrons, grown for gardens and parks all over the continent. In May, when the rhododendrons bloom, the whole district turns into an unlikely riot of colour, and the roads between the nurseries are some of the most pleasant on the edge of the city.
Read the complete Hamburg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 573 km.
Buchholz fuel gate → Wilsede heath core is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wilsede heath, park at Niederhaverbeck → Lüneburg old town meal stop is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lüneburg old town meal stop → Elbe marsh return is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Elbe marsh return → Back to Buchholz is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Back to Buchholz → Hamburg north-west edge is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hamburg north-west edge → Itzehoe fuel gate is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Itzehoe fuel gate → Husum food stop is 87 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Husum food stop → St. Peter-Ording beach edge is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
St. Peter-Ording beach edge → Eider barrage viewpoint is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Eider barrage viewpoint → Büsum harbour stop is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Büsum harbour stop → Back to Hamburg is 111 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.