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.
223 km one way from Harburg - plan on about 3 h 52 of riding. It goes by way of Wilseder Berg heath roads, Soltau, Celle old-town sight and Uelzen Hundertwasser station. 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. 48 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Harburg, on the southern bank of the Elbe, is the part of Hamburg that visitors usually skip, which makes it a good place to leave from. The district grew up around an inner harbour and a long tradition of industry, and today it holds a mix of old brick warehouses, a technical university and the modern bridges and motorways that thread over the great river. A short way north, the port of Hamburg, one of the largest in Europe, spreads over islands and docks, with cranes standing against the sky and container ships passing so close to the river's edge that they seem to float over the roofs. On the far side, the Elbphilharmonie, a glass concert hall built on a brick warehouse and opened in 2017, shines like a crystal wave.
Read the complete Hamburg south gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hamburg south is where the day begins. Next is Wilseder Berg heath roads.
There is a certain humour in calling a hill of 169 metres a mountain, and the people of the Lüneburg Heath enjoy it. The Wilseder Berg is the highest point in the whole of north-western Germany's lowlands, a rounded dune-like summit of sand and heather that the last ice age left behind, and the view from the top, across a rolling sea of heath, juniper and distant forest, is wide enough that you stop thinking about the height. The hamlet of Wilsede at its foot is closed to cars, which is how it kept its thatched barns and its little museum of heath life. You can ride to the edge of the reserve, park, and walk in.
Read the complete Wilseder Berg heath roads 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.
Soltau is a working town on the western edge of the Lüneburg Heath, a place of around twenty thousand people on the little Böhme river, and a stop here is for fuel, a sandwich and a look at your map. I say that with affection. The riding you came here for is out on the heath and the Aller valley, and Soltau gives you the services to do it without worry. There are several filling stations on the through roads, supermarkets with decent bakery counters, and a pedestrian centre where you can sit outside and drink coffee on a sunny day without anybody asking you for anything.
Read the complete Soltau fuel gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fill up here — 159 km left and no pump marked after this. Next is Celle old-town sight.
Celle is a town that was almost forgotten and so was saved. It sits on the Aller river at the southern edge of the Lüneburg Heath, a handsome ducal residence of seventy-one thousand people, and its old town escaped the bombing of the Second World War, leaving hundreds of half-timbered houses in perfect shape, with carved beams, painted inscriptions and gables leaning over the cobbles.
Read the complete Celle old-town sight write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Celle old-town sight, about halfway at 40 m. Next is Uelzen Hundertwasser station.
A railway station is not what you would expect on a list of highlights, but Uelzen is not an ordinary case. The town's main station was rebuilt in the late 1990s to a design by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the Austrian artist who hated straight lines, and it opened in 2000, the year of his death. The result is a joyful mess: coloured columns, tiles in shining patterns, golden onion domes on the roof, trees growing out of windows and a floor that undulates beneath your feet. It looks as if a child had been allowed to design a station and had been given a big budget. Inside there is a normal functioning railway. Outside there is a line of motorcyclists taking photos, because this has become a kind of pilgrimage for people on two wheels.
Read the complete Uelzen Hundertwasser station write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Uelzen Hundertwasser station sits at 212 km, late in the day. Next is Lüneburg food stop.
Salt made Lüneburg, and the town looks as though it knows it. For more than a thousand years the brine springs under the old town were boiled down into white gold, which was carted to Lübeck and shipped across the Baltic to preserve herring, and the profits built a city of tall brick gables, grand merchant houses and a town hall that grew by accretion across six centuries.
Read the complete Lüneburg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 223 km.
Hamburg south gate → Wilseder Berg heath roads is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wilsede heath, park at Niederhaverbeck → Soltau fuel gate is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Soltau fuel gate → Celle old-town sight is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Celle old-town sight → Uelzen Hundertwasser station is 58 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Uelzen Hundertwasser station → Lüneburg food stop is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.