Holstein Switzerland Lakes Loop

Green hills, lake views and proper northern touring rhythm.

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Why this ride

Green hills, lake views and proper northern touring rhythm. A 222 km loop that starts and ends near Farmsen-Berne, about 4 h 37 of riding. It goes by way of Bad Oldesloe, Plön lake road, Malente café stop and Eutin castle sight. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.

Roadbook

1. Hamburg north-east edge start

   On the north-eastern edge of Hamburg the city thins into a green ring of woods, meadows and villages, and the point here sits close to the boundary with Schleswig-Holstein. Stapelfeld, a small village in the Stormarn district, is just across the line, while the big residential districts of Farmsen-Berne and Sasel lie on the Hamburg side. The ground is gently rolling, and the landscape is a mix of fields, small woods, and the quiet backwaters of the Bille and the Alster.

   This is where the ride begins, and it is a good start. In ten minutes you are out of the city's grip and into lanes lined with oaks and beeches, past thatched farms and stables, with the traffic lights of Hamburg already forgotten. Horse riders are common here, and the lanes are shared with cyclists and joggers, so keep your speed down in the villages. The surfaces are generally good, with the occasional patch of broken tarmac after winter.

   The countryside north and east of here is the beginning of the Holstein lake district, where the glaciers of the last Ice Age left behind their moraines and hollows, and the day is meant to carry you towards the lakes and low hills around Eutin and Plön. It takes a while to get there, so use the quiet lanes in the first hour to settle in. Early on a clear morning the light is low and the fields are damp, a good time for a quiet start.

   Fuel is easy in Hamburg's suburbs, with stations on the main roads, and it is sensible to fill up here before leaving the city, since the lakes have fewer pumps. Farmsen-Berne and Sasel have supermarkets and bakeries, and Stapelfeld has a handful of small places for a coffee. Check the weather, because North German days can change from sunshine to showers in the time it takes to put on a jacket. Pack a waterproof, and leave without hurry.

2. Bad Oldesloe fuel gate fuel

   It has about twenty-four thousand inhabitants, fuel stations, supermarkets and cafes, and the main road passes right through, so it works well as a fuel stop on the journey between the two great Hanseatic cities. The motorway runs a few kilometres west, but the old road is more interesting.

   The town grew rich on salt. Brine springs rise here, and the salt works provided a living for centuries, in competition with nearby Lüneburg and Lübeck. The town added the title Bad, meaning spa, to its name when it became a brine bath, and visitors came to take the waters in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The salt works have gone, but a pleasant spa park and a museum recall the trade, and the Trave runs through the town in a pretty, tree-lined course.

   For a rider, the road to Bad Oldesloe from Hamburg runs through gently rolling farmland, with sections of avenue lined with old trees, and the surface is generally good. The speed limit changes frequently, and speed cameras are common near the town, so keep a watch. It is a convenient stage on a day that heads towards the Baltic coast or the lakes of Holstein, and the surrounding countryside is pretty in a quiet way: hedgerows, small woods, and meadows full of cattle.

   The Trave is a small, winding river that begins in the Holstein hills and flows through Bad Oldesloe and Lübeck to the Baltic at Travemünde. Along the way, it passes through reed beds and wet meadows that are rich in birds, and canoeists enjoy the quieter stretches. Rümpel, a village three and a half kilometres away, is a small place with a few houses and a church. Fill up here and have a coffee before setting off.

3. Plön lake road swim

   Plön sits on a ridge between two lakes in the part of eastern Holstein that the locals call the Holstein Switzerland, a name that sounds absurd until you see the rolling, wooded country and the lines of blue water lying between the hills. The Great Plön Lake is the biggest lake in Schleswig-Holstein, with islands, bays and many smaller lakes around it, and the town of Plön, with thirteen thousand people, occupies a narrow strip of land between them. The altitude here is only twenty-eight metres, but the glacial landscape gives it a lot of character.

   On the highest point stands the castle, a large white Baroque palace built for a duke of the Holstein-Plön line in the seventeenth century, later used as a school and still imposing today. It looks out over the lake and the town below, and the park around it has views that explain why the dukes chose the site. The old town below is small and attractive, with a street of low houses, a church and a market square that is a good place for a coffee.

   The riding here is a pleasure. The roads wind around lakes and through beech woods, with gentle ups and downs, shaded avenues and glimpses of water through the trees. The surface is generally good, bends are easy and the pace is relaxed, so it is a good ride for a warm evening. The lake road is also a swimming spot, and in summer small beaches on the shores are popular with locals, with clear water and sandy bottoms in places. The water warms slowly, so it is refreshing rather than warm.

   Plön has fuel, restaurants and cafés, and there are smoked-fish stands near the lake in season. You can also hire a boat or take a lake cruise if you want to see the shore from the water. The region is popular on summer weekends, so arrive early or ride on a weekday.

   The best seasons are late spring, when the beech leaves are fresh green, and early autumn, when the colours turn and the lake is calm. This stop sits at the end of a ride that starts along the Elbe dikes and the Altes Land, a very different landscape of fruit orchards and flat marsh.

4. Malente café stop photo

   The lakes of Holstein Switzerland form a loose chain around Malente, and the town's main street is the place where the lake atmosphere turns into something you can sit in with a cup of coffee. The name Holstein Switzerland is a nineteenth-century tourist invention, given by visitors who thought the rolling hills and blue water looked like Swiss scenery. It is not a bad comparison if you squint, and the area has a gentle, glacial beauty of its own, shaped by ice that left behind hills, hollows and a string of lakes.

   Malente itself is a spa and holiday town, with a long tradition as a Kneipp resort, a water-cure centre where people came to take cold footbaths and walk in the woods. It has a calm, slightly old-fashioned air, with villas along the lakes and a good number of bakeries and cafés. Sit down at one of them and order a slice of cake, since the north Germans' attachment to afternoon coffee and cake is serious. On the lakes, small passenger boats run a circuit connecting several of them, called the Five Lakes tour, and it is a pleasant thing to do on a warm day.

   The riding to and from Malente is modest but engaging. Roads run through low hills, past fields, lakes and beech woods, with plenty of gentle bends and the occasional small climb. The hills are not high, and the highest point in Schleswig-Holstein, the Bungsberg at about 168 metres, lies not far away to the northeast, which tells you how much altitude you can expect. Tarmac is mostly fine. On summer weekends the lake roads can be busy with cyclists and cars, and the lanes around Eutin are popular, so go early.

   Services are easy. Malente has more than ten thousand people, so you will find fuel, supermarkets and several choices for lunch, while neighbouring Eutin has a bigger range. Parking a motorbike on the main street is not a problem. A small piece of advice: you will be tempted to stay longer than planned, particularly if the sun is out and a table by the water is free. Allow for that in the day's plan.

5. Eutin castle sight sight

   Eutin is called the city of roses, and it deserves it, but it was a bishop's town first. The castle stands on an island-like spot at the edge of the old centre, a moated, baroque building of pale brick and green copper roofs, set in a landscaped park that slopes down to the Great Eutin Lake. For centuries it was the residence of the prince-bishops of Lübeck, and later of the Dukes of Oldenburg, who gave the town a refined, slightly provincial court air that you can still feel in its elegant streets.

   The composer Carl Maria von Weber was born in Eutin in 1786, and a summer opera festival named in his honour is staged in the castle gardens, on a floating stage by the lake. The town has a market square lined with old houses and a cluster of small shops and cafés, and a friendly, unhurried atmosphere. Eutin has about seventeen thousand people, and has everything a rider needs, from fuel to bakeries and places to eat.

   The countryside around Eutin is part of Holstein Switzerland, the glacial hill and lake country of eastern Schleswig-Holstein. The roads wind between lakes and beech woods, rise over small hills and drop into hollows, offering short stretches of real enjoyment, with gentle bends and long views. Spring brings fields of yellow rape and fruit blossom, summer fills the lakes with sailors and swimmers, and autumn gives you low gold light and quiet roads. Winter can be damp and grey, but the castle looks fine in the frost.

   Malente, a bigger village on the neighbouring lake, is a spa town with a pleasant lakeside walk, five kilometres away. Park the bike, walk across the bridge to the castle gardens, and sit on a bench with a coffee. The lake is calm and full of birds, and you may see swans and herons. If the weather is fine, stay for the evening, when the lake turns to silver and the swifts wheel overhead.

6. Lübeck old road food

   Lübeck is the queen of the Hanseatic League, and from the old road in you can see why. The brick skyline of seven church spires rises from an island in the Trave, with the great Holstentor gate, built in the fifteenth century and so heavy that it has sunk into the soft ground, standing guard at the western entrance. The whole old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and with over two hundred thousand people around it, the city has everything a rider could want: fuel, restaurants, shops and a lively old centre.

   For centuries Lübeck controlled the trade of the Baltic. Merchants brought salt from Lüneburg, which was shipped east, and returned with furs, wax, timber and grain from Russia and Scandinavia, and the wealth of those merchants is written in the brick gables of the old town. The Buddenbrooks house on Mengstraße, now a museum, recalls the novel by Thomas Mann, who was born here and made the city's merchant families famous in literature. His brother Heinrich and the novelist Günter Grass are also connected to the city.

   Food is a pleasure. Lübeck marzipan, made from almonds and sugar, has been famous since the nineteenth century, and the shop and cafe of Niederegger on the market is a must for sweet-toothed visitors. The Lübecker Rotspon, a red wine that is matured in the city's cellars, is another local product, and the old inns serve Labskaus, a sailor's dish of corned beef, potatoes and beetroot, topped with a fried egg and a pickled herring. The Hospital of the Holy Spirit, a huge medieval hospice with a painted hall, is worth a look.

   Riding in is easy, along the Trave from the north or through the leafy suburbs. Park near the Holstentor or the station, and explore on foot, because the old town is an island and busy with traffic. Stockelsdorf, four kilometres away, is the nearest suburb. If you stay for the evening, the spires are floodlit, and the reflections in the river are fine. It is a lovely place to end a day, and a good place to eat well.

7. Back to Hamburg finish

   Wandsbek is the neighbourhood that most people never think of as a place, but it was once a town of its own, and a Danish one at that. Until the middle of the nineteenth century it belonged to the Danish crown, and a poet named Matthias Claudius lived here in the late eighteenth century, editing a newspaper called the Wandsbecker Bote and writing the evening song Der Mond ist aufgegangen, which every German schoolchild knows. Now the district is an anonymous sprawl of housing blocks and shopping streets, but the story is worth remembering as you ride in.

   The point here lies at the north-eastern fringe, in the quiet housing estates between Farmsen-Berne and Sasel, where the city meets the fields. It is a landing strip for the end of a ride, a moment of calm after the lakes and hills of Holstein. The roads in these suburbs are quiet in the evening, lined with lime trees and detached houses, and the traffic is easy compared to the centre.

   Coming home at the end of a day is a time to think about the road you rode. Holstein Switzerland is not high or wild, but it is full of small pleasures: a lake shining between the trees, a baroque castle, a village with a good bakery. The ride back often runs on straight roads through farmland with big skies, and the evening light, in late summer, is long and honey-coloured. Watch for deer at dusk, particularly where the road crosses woods or hedges.

   Fuel is plentiful, because the suburbs are packed with stations and supermarkets, and the nearby districts have everything. A short ride south brings you to the centre of Hamburg, with its harbour and the big ships. If you have time left, head for the Alster, the lake in the middle of the city, and walk along its shore as the lights come on. The evening air smells of water and linden, and the city quiets down. A good place to end the day, whatever the weather.

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