Why this ride
A 623 km loop that starts and ends near Hamburg, about 9 h 32 of riding. The stops in between: Wingst, Bomlitz, Elbe and Wrestedt. Long stretches are under trees.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Wingst Forest and Elbe Ferry Loop + Schaalsee and Ratzeburg Lakes
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 623 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 9 h 32
- Journey
- Loop
Distance and timing basis
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.
Scenic road chapters
German Timber Frame Road Central Section
64 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it. Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 95 km
- Named road
- German Timber Frame Road Central Section
German Timber Frame Road Central Section
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 35 km this is German Timber Frame Road Central Section, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 110 km
- Named road
- German Timber Frame Road Central Section
Mölln fuel gate → Ratzeburg lake road
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 16 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go — slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 16 km
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Hamburg
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.
2. Wingst
3. Bomlitz
4. Elbe
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.
5. Wrestedt
6. Ratzeburg
7. Hamburg
Return visit. Read the place description above.