Elbe Dikes and Altes Land Sweep

A 427 km loop from Hamburg west dock edge

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Why this ride

River horizon, dike lanes and ferry mood without city crawling. Out of Hamburg and back again: 427 km, roughly 7 h 46 in the saddle. The stops in between: Hermannsburg and Elbe.

Roadbook

1. Hamburg start

   Hamburg opens up to the water. The Elbe runs through the city, the port covers a large chunk of it, and the harbour front is a long working landscape of cranes, container ships, tugs and ferries, with the sound of horns carrying across the water at night. The old warehouse district, the Speicherstadt, is a block of red-brick buildings on oak piles, built in the 1880s and now partly part of a UNESCO listing, with canals running between them and gabled facades reflecting in the water. Next to it, the HafenCity is a modern district whose centrepiece is the Elbphilharmonie, a concert hall in the shape of a glass wave on top of an old warehouse, opened in 2017 after many delays and a scandalous overrun in costs.

   The city has a mix of moods. The Reeperbahn is a famous street of bars, clubs and theatres in St Pauli, where the Beatles played in their early years, and on a Sunday morning, the fish market opens at dawn and is a place of loud stalls, hot coffee and people coming home from the night before. The Alster, two lakes in the middle of town, is surrounded by fine villas and parks, where sailing boats cross the water in summer. Churches such as the Michel, with a green copper tower, dominate the skyline, and the old tunnel under the Elbe, built in 1911, still lets pedestrians walk under the river.

   From Hamburg, the ride goes north-east toward Lübeck, the old Hanseatic capital, with a Gothic brick centre and its Holstentor gate. The road passes through the farmland of Schleswig-Holstein, flat, open and often windy, with brick villages, thatched farmhouses and long avenues. It is a relaxed ride, with moderate traffic and a good surface, and the sea is never far. In the city itself, traffic is heavy, parking is difficult, and a few tunnel and bridge routes can be blocked by incidents, so allow time for the Elbe crossings.

   Fuel is easy outside the centre and on the main roads. Eat a fish roll on the quayside or a plate of Labskaus, a salty mash of corned beef and potato, and have a coffee in a harbour café. Summer is the high season, but spring and autumn are quieter, with sharp light on the water. Rain can arrive at any moment, so a waterproof layer is not optional.

2. Hermannsburg fuel

   In the middle of the nineteenth century, a pastor named Ludwig Harms founded a missionary seminary in Hermannsburg, a small village in the Lüneburg Heath, and sent farmers and craftsmen as missionaries to Africa and beyond. Their influence spread far further than anyone could have expected: there is a Hermannsburg in South Africa, and another in the Australian outback, founded by Lutheran missionaries from here. The mission still exists, and the village has kept a quiet, slightly pious charm, with half-timbered farmhouses and old oak trees.

   The landscape around Hermannsburg is the classic Lüneburg Heath: sandy soils, pine forests, juniper bushes, birch trees and, in late summer, vast purple carpets of flowering heather. The heath is not a natural wilderness but a cultural landscape, created over centuries by grazing sheep, especially the local breed known as Heidschnucken, and it is maintained the same way today. The Örtze, a clear, fast-flowing little river, runs through the village, and it is popular with canoeists.

   There is also darker history close by. A few kilometres west, near Bergen, lies the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where tens of thousands of prisoners died, Anne Frank among them. The memorial is a sombre, important place to visit if you have the time and the frame of mind. To the east, the airfield at Faßberg played a major role in the Berlin Airlift of 1948 and 1949, when Western aircraft supplied the blockaded city by air.

   For riders, Hermannsburg is a practical fuel stop with a supermarket, bakeries and cafés. The roads through the heath are generally quiet, flat to gently rolling, and pleasant rather than challenging, with long straights through the forests and gentle curves between the villages. Watch out for military vehicles, deer and the occasional tank crossing near the training areas, and for sand on the road surface. The heather blooms from about August to September, and that is the best time to visit, though the heath is beautiful in every season.

3. Elbe food

   Despite the name, there is no great river here. This Elbe is a village in the rolling farmland of southeastern Lower Saxony, between Salzgitter and Hildesheim, and the river that shares its name flows more than a hundred kilometres to the east. It is a quiet place of brick farmhouses, a church, fields of sugar beet, wheat and rapeseed, and gentle hills, close to the small towns of Baddeckenstedt and Holle in the valley of the Innerste.

   The landscape is the northern foreland of the Harz. On a clear day you can see the dark, wooded hills of the Harz on the southern horizon, and the low ridges around here, the Salzgitter hills and the Hainberg, give the roads a pleasant rhythm of short climbs, gentle descents and long views over the fields. In May the rapeseed turns the slopes bright yellow, and in autumn the beet harvest fills the lanes with tractors and mud, so watch the surface.

   The region has a strong industrial history hidden beneath the farmland. Iron ore found around Salzgitter led to the creation of huge steelworks in the 1930s, and the town grew rapidly around them, with some of its industry still active today. Hildesheim to the northwest is an old bishop's city with a cathedral and St Michael's Church, both on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and Wolfenbüttel to the east has a large ducal palace and one of the oldest libraries in Europe.

   The riding is easygoing: quiet country roads, some well surfaced, others patched and narrow, linking villages through fields and woods. There is little traffic outside rush hour, but watch for farm machinery and wildlife at dawn and dusk. The real curves are a short ride away, in the Harz around Goslar and the hills of the Innerste valley, where the roads climb through forest to dams and reservoirs.

   Elbe itself is small, so for fuel and shops head to Holle, Baddeckenstedt or Salzgitter, all within a few kilometres. Village bakeries and inns are found in the area, and a slice of cake and a coffee is a fine excuse to stop. If you were expecting to see the Elbe river, check the route: the Prignitz rides along that river lie far to the northeast, beyond Wolfsburg and Magdeburg.

4. Hamburg finish

Where this sits

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