Hamburg · Travemünde Bay and Old Holstein Roads

Sea air, brick towns and lake-country bends without motorway boredom.

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Why this ride

Sea air, brick towns and lake-country bends without motorway boredom. Out of Farmsen-Berne and back again: 206 km, roughly 4 h 07 in the saddle. On the way it passes Ahrensburg clean exit, Lübeck old road, Travemünde bay stop and Eutin lake road.

Roadbook

1. Hamburg north-east edge start · 20 m

   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.

   For a motorcyclist, a start here has a clear advantage: it is on the right side of the city for a run out to the north and east, avoiding the harbour and the tunnels and the Elbe bridges. You can pick up the roads towards the lakes of Holstein or the heaths of the Lüneburg country without crossing the centre. Commuter traffic on weekday mornings is heavy, so early on a weekend or after nine on a weekday are better.

   Hamburg itself deserves a moment of thought as you leave. It is Germany's second city, with a harbour that has been central to its life for over eight hundred years, and its wealth is visible in the red-brick warehouses of the Speicherstadt, the grand merchant houses and the lakes of the Alster in the heart of town. The city has always seen itself as a free city of merchants, independent and outward-looking, and people there still say they are Hamburgers first and Germans second.

   Fuel is plentiful in all the surrounding districts, with stations on the main roads and supermarkets on every other corner, so fill up before you go. A bakery breakfast of rolls and coffee is the local way to start. The wind from the west, off the North Sea, will usually push you along on the way out.

2. Ahrensburg clean exit fuel · 45 m

   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.

   It has a surprise at its heart. The palace of Ahrensburg, a Renaissance building from the late sixteenth century, stands on a moated island, white and red with stepped gables and corner towers, and looks as though it belongs in the Netherlands or Denmark. It was built by the Rantzau family, one of the powerful noble houses of Holstein, and it is among the best preserved of its kind in northern Germany. The interior is open to visitors as a museum, and the grounds, with their avenue and canal, are free to walk. A short stroll in the park is a pleasant way to stretch after the city traffic.

   The name also belongs to archaeology. Ahrensburg gave its name to the Ahrensburg culture, a group of reindeer hunters who lived in the region at the end of the last ice age, about twelve thousand years ago, and whose flint tools and arrow shafts were first found in the tunnel valley nearby. It is a reminder that the plain north of Hamburg has been hunted over and lived in since the glaciers retreated.

   The riding is the main thing. From Ahrensburg, a number of country roads run north and east into Schleswig-Holstein, through farmland, woods and little villages. The surface is generally good, the traffic thins quickly after the town, and the landscape grows softer with every kilometre. The morning rush hour is the main hazard, and it makes sense to leave before seven or after nine. Fill up here, since the first stretch of the countryside has fewer petrol stations than you might think. Take a moment in the quiet streets of the old town before you go, and enjoy the feeling of the city falling away.

3. Lübeck old road sight · 13 m

   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.

4. Travemünde bay stop swim · 3 m

   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.

   The resort has a long history. Travemünde has been a bathing place since the early nineteenth century, when the first visitors came by coach from Lübeck for the sea air, and by the end of the century it was a fashionable resort with a Kurhaus and a casino. The town's connection to Lübeck is old, and for centuries it was the city's port, guarding the river mouth. The brick buildings along the front and the weight of the old ships in the harbour speak of that long maritime history.

   Out on the water, the Baltic is busy. Ferries to Sweden, Finland and the Baltic states leave from the terminal on the other side of the river mouth, and their enormous white hulls move past with a slow, stately tread. Sailing yachts and fishing boats weave between them, and on summer evenings the sky above the bay is full of colour. Swimming is pleasant on calm days, though jellyfish can appear in late summer and the lifeguards raise warning flags when the wind is up.

   For riders the stop is straightforward. The approach from Lübeck is a fast road across flat farmland, with traffic that builds on summer weekends, and the final stretch through the town is slow and often congested. Parking close to the beach is possible, especially on weekdays, though some car parks charge a fee and the cobbles near the harbour are slippery. Fuel stations, supermarkets and cafés are plentiful, since the town has about fourteen thousand people, and an ice cream on the promenade is practically obligatory. The best moment is the early evening, when the day-trippers have gone and the sea is calm.

5. Eutin lake road scenic · 33 m

   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.

   The lake road is the point. It runs through the region known as Holsteinische Schweiz, or Holstein Switzerland, a name that makes locals smile a little, since the highest point, the Bungsberg, reaches just over a hundred and sixty metres. But what the hills lack in height they make up for in variety. This is glacial landscape, shaped by ice-age moraines that left behind a jumble of small hills, hollows, lakes and boggy valleys. The roads wind between them, through beech woods, past reed-fringed water and along tree-lined avenues, with views of the lakes opening between the trunks. For northern Germany, it is rich, rolling riding, with short, tight curves in the woods and gentle grades.

   The surface is mostly good, but many of the lanes are narrow and tree-shaded, so patches of moss, damp leaves and fallen twigs can catch you out after rain. Cyclists and walkers share the roads in summer, particularly around Eutin and Malente, and the lake is a popular place for sailing and swimming. Early mornings are best, when the water is still and the mist drifts across, and the autumn colours in the beech woods are superb.

   Eutin is known as the Rose Town, because of its gardens, and it has a population of around seventeen thousand, so fuel, bakeries and cafes are no trouble. A slice of cake in the market square, with a view of the lake, is the traditional way to spend an hour. The coast of the Baltic, with its seaside resorts, is only a short ride east, so a lake-and-sea day is easy to put together.

6. Plön water view photo · 26 m

   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.

   The town is hemmed in by water on several sides, and that is the point of its geography. Plön lies on a neck of land between the Great Plön Lake and a string of smaller lakes, and every street seems to end in a glimpse of blue. The lakes are the legacy of the last ice age, when the ice left behind a landscape of hollows that filled with meltwater, and the largest of them is the biggest lake in Schleswig-Holstein. The depth varies and the water is clear in places, and in winter hard frosts sometimes allow skating.

   A walk along the promenade is the best way to see it. The path is flat and well kept, with benches and small jetties, and it runs along the shore past boathouses, reed beds and a small beach. You can hire rowing boats in season, and passenger boats run tours of the lake, stopping at several landings. Birds are easy to see, with coots, grebes and cormorants on the water and herons standing in the reeds, and in winter a surprising number of ducks gather on the open surface.

   Riding to the water is simple. The approach roads run through gentle farmland and beech woods, with smooth bends and light traffic outside the weekends. Plön has about thirteen thousand people, and fuel stations, supermarkets and cafés are close to the centre. Parking near the lakefront is easy on weekdays, and the cobbles are short. Bring a camera, and give yourself half an hour for the light. Sunset over the lake in late summer is a good time, when the sky turns pink and the water takes on the colour.

7. Back to Hamburg finish · 20 m

   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.

   If you have arrived back with energy to spare, Hamburg is a city that rewards an evening. Head for the water: the Alster lakes in the centre are ringed with paths and cafés, with white excursion boats gliding across the surface. Or take the ferry across the Elbe, which is part of the city's ordinary public transport and gives a fine view of the harbour cranes, the container ships and the grand shape of the concert hall on the quay. The city's signature snack, a fish roll with pickled herring or fried fish, can be bought at a stall near the landing stage.

   The weather in Hamburg is famously changeable, and the saying goes that you can have four seasons in an afternoon. Rain, wind and sunshine pass over the flat land in quick succession, so a layer of waterproofs is always useful. Autumn and spring tend to be the most pleasant, with the low light of evening turning the brick red and the canals silver. If it rains, shelter in the doorway of a café and wait; it will pass.

   There is no worry about fuel here, because the district is thick with stations and supermarkets, and the nearest big shops are in Wandsbek, a few minutes away. Park the bike somewhere safe, take off your helmet, and give your legs a moment to remember how to walk. Then decide whether to go straight to bed or to find a late supper. Either is a perfectly good way to end a ride.

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