Hamburg · Wendland and Elbe Forest Sweep

A 207 km loop from Lauenburg Elbe

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Why this ride

Longer, quieter and more grown-up than a quick north-German loop. A 207 km loop that starts and ends near Lauenburg, about 3 h 34 of riding. It goes by way of Hitzacker river balcony, Dannenberg town and Göhrde forest. Back roads rather than main roads, where the map allows.

Roadbook

1. Lauenburg Elbe gate fuel

   Lauenburg is the gate of the Elbe, the last town in Schleswig-Holstein before the river runs on into Lower Saxony and Hamburg, and it clings to a steep bank above the water in a way that gives its old town an unusual shape. The main street, the Elbstraße, runs along the shore below the cliff, lined with old half-timbered houses, and the upper town sits on the ridge above, linked by steps and winding lanes. A castle tower still rises over the roofs.

   The river has made the town and, more than once, flooded it. The Elbe was for centuries the great trade road of northern Germany, carrying salt from Lüneburg and timber and grain downstream, and Lauenburg grew up as a customs and shipping point. A museum on the quay tells the story of the river boats, including the old sailing barges and steamers, and the quay itself is a fine place for a stroll. The floods of 2013 reached extraordinary heights, and marks on the buildings show how high the water rose.

   The river runs through a broad green valley here, with meadows, reeds and old willows, and across the water the land of Lower Saxony stretches away. The Elbe cycle route follows the bank, so cyclists are a common sight, and the road along the river is calm, with a good surface and light traffic. Birds are plentiful: storks nest in the villages, and cranes and geese pass through in autumn.

   Lauenburg has nearly twelve thousand people, so fuel is easy to find, with stations on the main road, and supermarkets and cafes in the centre. As the start of a ride it is a practical place to fill up and eat, with Hamburg about forty-five kilometres to the west and the Wendland country to the south-east, a region of quiet forests and round villages.

   Spring, when the river is high with meltwater and the meadows are bright, and early autumn, when the light is soft and the birds are moving, are the best seasons. A morning start gives mist on the river and quiet roads.

2. Hitzacker river balcony photo

   Hitzacker is a small town on an island in the Elbe, and it looks like a model of itself. The old centre is a tight cluster of half-timbered houses with carved beams and painted panels, grouped around a church and a handful of narrow streets, surrounded on all sides by water and meadow. The town sits in the Wendland, the far north-eastern corner of Lower Saxony, a region of quiet villages, forests and wide river plains.

   The balcony of the title is the river terrace above the town, where you look out over the Elbe floodplain, a broad sweep of green meadows, with the river wandering through and the far bank low and blue. On a clear morning the mist lies in the hollows and the sun rises over the water, and it is a place to stop and breathe. The Elbe floods here from time to time, and the old houses are marked with the high-water lines from past years, some of them well above head height.

   The Wendland has its own character, shaped by the Slavic people who lived here in the Middle Ages and left behind the round villages, called Rundlinge, in which the houses are arranged in a ring around a central green with a single entrance. Several survive near Hitzacker and Dannenberg, and the pattern is easy to see from the air. The area has also been a centre of protest and independent thinking, and the town hosts a well-known summer music festival.

   The roads here are quiet, with long views, gentle bends, a good surface and almost no traffic outside the summer holidays. Riding along the dike, with the river on one side and fields on the other, is a pleasure. The sun can be strong, and wind from the west can blow across the open land.

   With just over five thousand people, Hitzacker has a few cafes, a bakery and small shops, though fuel is not guaranteed in a town this small, and Dannenberg, seven kilometres away, is a larger town with more choice. Local fish and a plate of Wendland sausage are good for lunch. Spring and autumn are the best times, when the light is soft and the river is full of birds.

3. Dannenberg food town food

   Dannenberg sits on the Jeetzel, a slow, brown little river that wanders through the Wendland, the odd bulge of Lower Saxony that pokes east across the Elbe almost to Brandenburg. For years the East German border ran a few kilometres away, and the region still has the faintly forgotten feel of a place that was a dead end. Riders from Hamburg tend to find that rather pleasant. The traffic is thin, the villages are low and tidy, and nobody is in a hurry.

   The town itself is small enough to walk end to end in a quarter of an hour. There is a stump of old castle, the Waldemarturm, standing above the lower town, and a market square with the kind of brick and half-timber that survived because nothing important ever happened to it. That is a joke, but only half of one: Dannenberg is better known to Germans for the protests around the nuclear waste store at nearby Gorleben, which for decades brought tractors, sit-downs and yellow crosses to these fields. You still see the crosses in some gardens. It is worth knowing that history when you notice how many cafés and bakeries here cater to a politically opinionated, slightly bohemian crowd.

   As a stop it does the job well. With more than eight thousand people it has several fuel stations, supermarkets and a handful of places to sit down with a proper lunch, and parking a bike on the square is no trouble. A regional habit worth trying is the baked goods and the sausage from local butchers, plain and good, with nothing that needs explaining.

   What I like most is what lies around the town. The Wendland is famous for its Rundlinge, villages laid out in a ring around a central green with all the farm gables facing inward, an arrangement that goes back to Slavic settlers. Ride a few kilometres in almost any direction and you can find one, usually on a road where you meet more cyclists than cars. The surface is mostly good, the corners are gentle, and the landscape is soft: wet meadows, alder carrs, the occasional stork nest on a chimney. Add the Elbe dikes just to the north and you have a day of easy, unpressured riding. Come in late spring or early autumn, when the light is low and the fields smell of cut grass or wood smoke.

4. Göhrde forest sweep scenic

   The Göhrde is one of the biggest continuous woods in northern Lower Saxony, a patch of oak, beech and pine that stretches for kilometres between Lüneburg, Dahlenburg and Dannenberg. Ride into it from any direction and the temperature drops by a couple of degrees, the light turns green, and the noise of the open country just stops. After the flat, windy farmland of the Elbe plain it feels like a different country.

   The wood has a past worth knowing. It was a hunting ground of the Hanoverian rulers, who kept a lodge here, and the forest was managed for deer and boar long before anyone thought of it as a place for recreation. In September 1813 a small but notable battle was fought in these trees, when allied troops fought a French and Danish force in the last stages of the Napoleonic wars. Locals still remember it and there is a memorial for it. Today the forestry is gentler, and the Göhrde is a nature-heavy place where red deer, wild boar and the occasional cranes pass through, and where you might see a buzzard from the saddle if you ride early.

   The riding itself is quiet and rhythmic. The roads are narrow and straight at first and then bend lazily around clearings and old tree lines, with patchy shade that makes the surface alternate between dry and damp. There are root heaves and fallen needles in places, so treat the dark stretches with respect, particularly in autumn when leaves hide patches of moisture. In summer the tunnel of trees is a relief on a hot day. In winter it can hold ice in the shade long after the open fields have cleared.

   Nothing here is a fuel stop. Zernien and Nahrendorf are villages without much to offer a hungry rider, and the closest decent options are Dannenberg to the east and Hitzacker on the Elbe, about twelve kilometres away, which has a pretty old centre of timbered houses and cafés. Fill the tank before you commit to the forest and carry a bottle of water. The point of the Göhrde is not to arrive anywhere but to spend half an hour in a long green corridor with the visor up and the engine ticking quietly.

5. Back to Lauenburg finish

   Lauenburg is where the Elbe stops being a big river and starts being a working waterway with serious ambitions. The town stretches along a steep bank, with the old town clinging to the hill and the lower town, the Elbstrasse, running along the water's edge, and the river below is wide, brown and busy with barges. For centuries this was a toll town, collecting dues from the traffic that moved between Hamburg and the Baltic, and the Elbe-Lübeck canal begins nearby, which once carried salt from Lüneburg to the sea.

   It was the capital of a small duchy, and Bismarck took the title Duke of Lauenburg when he was dismissed from office in 1890, a piece of local trivia that the town has not forgotten. Its riverside houses, many of them half-timbered, were long threatened by the Elbe's floods, and the water has left marks on the walls to show the high-water years. The altitude here is a modest twenty metres, so the river feels close, and on a misty morning the barges drift past like ghosts.

   The riding is simple and pleasant, mostly on flat roads through farmland, dikes and woods, with easy curves and good surface. The ride from Hamburg here is an easy hour or so, then on to Mecklenburg, where roads become quieter and the lakes begin. Traffic is lighter than around Hamburg, but trucks are common on the main road, so stay alert.

   With about twelve thousand people, Lauenburg has a petrol station and shops, and is a sensible place to refuel before heading into the quieter country of Mecklenburg. There are fish restaurants along the river, and a plate of fried herring or a bowl of eel soup, a north German classic, is good value. Ice cream is also a local passion in summer.

   Early morning or evening light is best, when the sun picks out the old roofs and the river turns to metal, and spring is nice when the hedges are in bloom.

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