Why this ride
A one-way ride of 463 km, Farmsen-Berne to Ottensen - roughly 7 h 57 in the saddle. On the way it passes Ahrensburg clean exit, Lübeck old road, Travemünde bay stop and Eutin lake road.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Hamburg · Travemünde Bay and Old Holstein Roads + Hamburg · Wümme, Teufelsmoor and Artists’ Villages
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 463 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 7 h 57
- Journey
- One way; return travel is separate
Distance and timing basis
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.
Scenic road chapters
Ahrensburg clean exit → Lübeck old road
46 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
- 44 km
Baltic Coast Scenic Road
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For 19 km this is Baltic Coast Scenic Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 19 km
- Named road
- Baltic Coast Scenic Road
Baltic Coast Scenic Road
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 32 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
- 32 km
- Named road
- Baltic Coast Scenic Road
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Hamburg north-east edge
Hamburg's north-eastern fringe, where the city gives way to fields, is a district of long avenues, brick housing blocks and green corridors. The Wandse, a small river that runs through the area, has been tamed into a chain of ponds and parks, and the path along it is popular with walkers and cyclists. Farmsen-Berne and Steilshoop, the two large districts nearby, are residential neighbourhoods built mostly in the twentieth century, with rows of apartment buildings, shopping centres and tree-lined streets. Wandsbek, a little further south, is the big local hub.
Read the complete Hamburg north-east edge write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Hamburg north-east edge is where the day begins. Next is Ahrensburg clean.
2. Ahrensburg clean exit
Ahrensburg is where Hamburg lets go of you. Northeast of the city, on the edge of the Stormarn district, the urban sprawl thins out into villas and fields, and the town acts as a final pocket of services before the roads open into proper countryside. It is a prosperous commuter town of about thirty thousand people, with tidy streets, a good supply of fuel stations and a station on the S-Bahn line, and for riders leaving the city, it is a clean, simple place to top up and get your bearings.
Read the complete Ahrensburg clean exit write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Ahrensburg clean is the fuel stop for this leg. Next is Lübeck old road.
3. Lübeck old road
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.
Read the complete Lübeck old road write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
67 km in you reach Lübeck old road. Next is Travemünde bay stop.
4. Travemünde bay stop
At the mouth of the Trave, where the river gives up and the Baltic begins, the beach at Travemünde runs in a long, pale curve beneath the promenade. It is a proper town beach, with striped wicker beach chairs, a pier, a casino and a long row of hotels, and in summer it is very busy. The water is shallow and gentle, warming quickly, and the beach slopes so gradually that small children can paddle a long way out. A small lighthouse on the waterfront is claimed to be the oldest in Germany, dating from the sixteenth century, and it is a pleasant landmark to meet at.
Read the complete Travemünde bay stop write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Travemünde bay stop, early in the day at 3 m. Next is Eutin lake road.
5. Eutin lake road
Eutin is a small town that carries itself like a larger one, thanks to a history of bishops and dukes. For centuries it was the seat of the prince-bishops of Lübeck, who made the place their country residence, and later it belonged to the Dukes of Oldenburg. Their legacy is a moated castle beside the Großer Eutiner See, with a landscaped park around it, and a town centre of cobbled lanes, a market square and brick gabled houses. The composer Carl Maria von Weber was born here in 1786, and every summer an opera festival is staged on the lake in his honour, with the castle gardens as a backdrop.
Read the complete Eutin lake road write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Eutin lake road sits at 134 km, about halfway. Next is Plön water view.
6. Plön water view
There is a particular bend of the path at the water's edge in Plön where the whole lake seems to open at once. The castle stands on its hill to one side, white against the trees, the great lake spreads out in front with its islands and reed beds, and the sky sits large over it all. In the morning, with a light mist on the surface and swans moving slowly along the margin, it is a picture that needs very little help from a camera.
Read the complete Plön water view write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Plön water view comes up 168 km in. Next is Back to Hamburg.
7. Back to Hamburg
The Wandsbek and Farmsen end of Hamburg is the quiet side of the city, and it makes a gentle landing at the end of a day. After the traffic of the autobahn, the streets are slow and tree-lined, with low brick buildings and the soft glow of shop windows. The district is not on any tourist list, but it has the unhurried feel of a place where people actually live, with weekly markets, small cafés and corner bakeries, and a long stretch of park beside the Wandse where dog walkers and joggers pass in the evening.
Read the complete Hamburg write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Back to Hamburg closes the day. Next is Hamburg west edge.
8. Hamburg west edge
Altona was Danish until 1864, a fact that surprises many visitors, and the quarter still feels a little apart from the rest of Hamburg. The water is just ten metres or so below the street at this point. It is the part of Hamburg most closely tied to ships and the sea, and you can smell it: tar, diesel, wet rope and fish.
Read the complete Hamburg west edge write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
You start here, at 10 m. Next is Buxtehude exit.
9. Buxtehude exit gate
Buxtehude is the town of the hare and the hedgehog. In the Low German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, the hedgehog challenges the hare to a race, and wins by tricking him, with his wife waiting at the finish line looking just like him. The story is set on the heath near Buxtehude, and the town celebrates it with statues and a fountain. The name has also become a German byword for a remote place, as in the saying that someone is living in Buxtehude, which is a bit unfair to a lively Hanseatic town of nearly forty thousand.
Read the complete Buxtehude exit gate write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Next is Zeven country roads.
10. Zeven country roads
Zeven lies in the middle of the Geest, the sandy ridge of country that runs through the heart of Lower Saxony between the marshes of the coast and the lowlands of the south. The land is gently rolling, with pine woods, heath remnants, big farms and wet meadows in the valleys, and the villages are built around old churches and clusters of oaks. It is not a landscape that shouts, and it makes for easy riding, with long, quiet roads that curve between fields and woods and rarely see much traffic.
Read the complete Zeven country roads write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Zeven country roads comes up 302 km in. Next is Worpswede artists’ village.
11. Worpswede artists’ village
Worpswede began as a rebellion. In 1889 a handful of young painters, tired of the academies and their studio light, moved to a village in the Teufelsmoor, the Devil's Moor, north of Bremen, to paint what they saw: black peat canals, birch trees, huge skies, and people who cut turf for a living. Fritz Mackensen, Otto Modersohn, Fritz Overbeck, Heinrich Vogeler and, a few years later, the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker made the village a household name among art lovers, and the colony they founded grew into something like a small, permanent festival of the arts.
Read the complete Worpswede artists’ village write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
335 km in you reach Worpswede artists’ village. Next is Ottersberg Wümme roads.
12. Ottersberg Wümme roads
The Wümme is one of the quieter rivers of northern Germany, a dark, slow stream that winds through meadows and moorland east of Bremen, and the roads that follow it near Ottersberg are made of long, soft curves. The land is flat and wet, with reeds, alders and pollard willows along the banks, and on still mornings the mist hangs low over the water and the cattle stand in it to the knees. It is the sort of landscape painters came to find in the late nineteenth century, and many of them stayed.
Read the complete Ottersberg Wümme roads write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Ottersberg Wümme roads, late in the day at 12 m. Next is Rotenburg return road.
13. Rotenburg return road
Rotenburg on the Wümme is the town you eat in on the way home. It is a calm, prosperous place of about twenty-two thousand people, set on a stretch of the Wümme where the river is wide enough for rowing boats, with a market square, a handful of old half-timbered houses and a surprising number of good bakeries. It lacks the tourist crowds of the better-known towns, and that is exactly what makes it a good place to sit down with a plate and a pot of coffee.
Read the complete Rotenburg return road write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Food at 402 km, roughly 8 hours into the riding. Next is Back to Hamburg west edge.
14. Back to Hamburg west edge
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hamburg west edge write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Finish at Back to Hamburg west edge. That is the ride.
Leg by leg
Hamburg north-east edge to Ahrensburg clean exit
Hamburg north-east edge → Ahrensburg clean exit is 15 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ahrensburg clean exit to Lübeck old road
Ahrensburg clean exit → Lübeck old road is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Lübeck old road to Travemünde bay stop
Lübeck old road → Travemünde bay stop is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Travemünde bay stop to Eutin lake road
Travemünde bay stop → Eutin lake road is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Eutin lake road to Plön water view
Eutin lake road → Plön water view is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Plön water view to Back to Hamburg
Plön water view → Back to Hamburg is 77 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Back to Hamburg to Hamburg west edge
Back to Hamburg → Hamburg west edge is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hamburg west edge to Buxtehude exit gate
Hamburg west edge → Buxtehude exit gate is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Buxtehude exit gate to Zeven country roads
Buxtehude exit gate → Zeven country roads is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Zeven country roads to Worpswede artists’ village
Zeven country roads → Worpswede artists’ village is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Worpswede artists’ village to Ottersberg Wümme roads
Worpswede artists’ village → Ottersberg Wümme roads is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ottersberg Wümme roads to Rotenburg return road
Ottersberg Wümme roads → Rotenburg return road is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Rotenburg return road to Back to Hamburg west edge
Rotenburg return road → Back to Hamburg west edge is 69 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.