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.
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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.
Out of Rothenburgsort, one way: 504 km, roughly 8 h 35 in the saddle. The stops in between: Sachsenwald forest road, Lauenburg old Elbe town, Mölln lake stop and Ratzeburg island. 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.
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 11 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.
34 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.
The Vier- und Marschlande, the Four Lands and the Marsh Lands, spread out to the south-east of Hamburg, and this starting point at the edge of the city is the doorway to them. For several centuries this has been the garden of Hamburg: a low, fertile floodplain of the Elbe where farmers grow vegetables, flowers and fruit under glass and in the open, and send them into the city's markets. The land is protected by dikes and drained by a network of ditches, and the old farmhouses, thatched and half-timbered, sit on mounds at the edge of the fields.
Read the complete Hamburg south-east edge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hamburg south-east edge is where the day begins. Next is Sachsenwald forest road.
The Sachsenwald is the largest forest in Schleswig-Holstein, a broad sweep of beech, oak and spruce on sandy ground just east of Hamburg, and it has an unusually personal history. In 1871 Kaiser Wilhelm I gave it to Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor who had united Germany, as a reward for his services, and Bismarck made his home on its edge, in Friedrichsruh. He lived there for much of his later life, entertained statesmen and walked the forest paths, and he is buried in a mausoleum a short distance from the old house, in a simple chapel in the trees.
Read the complete Sachsenwald forest road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sachsenwald forest road comes up 34 km in. Next is Lauenburg old Elbe town.
Lauenburg sits on a steep bank above the Elbe, a small town with an old centre that tumbles down the hill in two levels, the upper town and the lower town, joined by narrow alleys. For centuries it was a toll station on one of the most important trade routes in northern Europe. Salt from Lüneburg went by barge and cart up the old Salt Road to Lübeck, and the Stecknitz Canal, an early artificial waterway, linked the Elbe to the Baltic. Boats, merchants and customs men all passed through Lauenburg, which is why the old houses are so good.
Read the complete Lauenburg old Elbe town write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
67 km in you reach Lauenburg old Elbe town. Next is Mölln lake stop.
Mölln is a town built between lakes, and the one to head for is the Stadtsee, the town lake, which laps right up to the old centre and has a small public beach, a lawn and a landing stage for pedal boats. The water is clear, gently sloping and mild by midsummer, and the park behind the beach is shaded by old trees. You change on the grass, nobody minds, and an hour in and out of the water is worth more than any amount of roadside coffee. Smaller lakes lie around the town, the Schulsee, the Hellbachsee and others, each with its own bathing place and its own reed margin.
Read the complete Mölln lake stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mölln lake stop, early in the day at 15 m. Next is Ratzeburg island coffee.
Coffee in Ratzeburg is a small expedition, because the old town is an island. You cross one of three causeways, park near the cathedral and walk the cobbled lanes, with the lake glinting at the end of every street. The island is only a few hundred metres across, and it takes less than half an hour to walk around, but it is packed with history and has a number of cafés where you can sit with a pot of coffee and a slice of cake.
Read the complete Ratzeburg island coffee write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Food at 134 km, roughly 3 hours into the riding. Next is Bad Oldesloe return.
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.
Read the complete Bad Oldesloe return gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bad Oldesloe return is the fuel stop for this leg. Next is Back to Hamburg.
At the end of a ride from the east, the road drops into Hamburg's old industrial quarters, and the city seems to gather itself in. Rothenburgsort and Hammerbrook are the districts around the point, and they carry a darker history than most. In July 1943, during the bombing of the city, a firestorm swept through these streets, killing tens of thousands and flattening whole neighbourhoods. Rebuilding came in the plain, practical style of the 1950s, and little of the older city survives. A few ruined walls and one or two memorial plaques remain.
Read the complete Hamburg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back to Hamburg closes the day. Next is Hamburg south.
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.
You start here, at 20 m. 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.
Soltau is the fuel stop for this leg. 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.
335 km in you reach Celle old-town sight. 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, late in the day at 43 m. 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.
Food at 402 km, roughly 8 hours into the riding. Next is Back to Hamburg.
Harburg is the part of Hamburg that most visitors never see, and that is its charm. It sits on the south bank of the Elbe, across the water from the centre, and for centuries it was a separate town in another state, a port, a manufacturing centre and a river crossing in its own right. Today it is a district of Hamburg with a university of technology, old warehouses converted into offices and an inner harbour with a mix of rusted cranes and new apartments. Beyond lies the Harburg Hills, a low wooded ridge, and then the heathland of Lower Saxony.
Read the complete Hamburg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Back to Hamburg. That is the ride.
Hamburg south-east edge → Sachsenwald forest road is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sachsenwald forest road → Lauenburg old Elbe town is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lauenburg old Elbe town → Mölln lake stop is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mölln lake stop → Ratzeburg island coffee is 11 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ratzeburg island coffee → Bad Oldesloe return gate is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bad Oldesloe return gate → Back to Hamburg is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Back to Hamburg → Hamburg south gate is 8 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hamburg south gate → Wilseder Berg heath roads is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wilsede heath, park at Niederhaverbeck → Soltau fuel gate is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Soltau fuel gate → Celle old-town sight is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Celle old-town sight → Uelzen Hundertwasser station is 57 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Uelzen Hundertwasser station → Lüneburg food stop is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lüneburg food stop → Back to Hamburg is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.