CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
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.
A one-way ride of 451 km, Seelze to Laatzen - roughly 6 h 52 in the saddle. The stops in between: Stadthagen, Bückeburg palace sight, Porta Westfalica view road and Minden river stop. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
19 km on Stadthagen fuel gate → Bückeburg palace sight.
15 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.
Hannover has a gate in every direction, at least in this ride's plan, and the one in the west lies near Seelze, a town on the Leine river a few kilometres outside the city. The Leine is a quiet and rather muddy stream that winds through flat country, and from here the ride sets off west, into the Weser hills, toward Bückeburg and onward into the Harz foothills. For a rider the gate is simply a convenient place to start with a full tank, light traffic and an easy road out, and it avoids the knot of the city centre.
Read the complete Hannover west gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hannover west is where the day begins. Next is Stadthagen.
Stadthagen is the capital of a country that no longer exists. For centuries, the town was the seat of the counts and princes of Schaumburg, a small state between Hanover and the Weser, and the Renaissance castle, built in the sixteenth century, still stands at the edge of the old town, with carved gables. The mausoleum of the princes, in the grounds of the St Martini church, is decorated with a bronze sculpture of the Resurrection by the Dutch sculptor Adriaen de Vries, one of the masterpieces of its period in Germany.
Read the complete Stadthagen fuel gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stadthagen is the fuel stop for this leg. Next is Bückeburg palace sight.
Bückeburg is a town to be seen from the inside of its palace, and the palace does not disappoint. Schloss Bückeburg, a Renaissance and Baroque complex surrounded by a moat, has been the seat of the princes of Schaumburg-Lippe for four hundred years, and the family still lives in part of it. A series of interiors are open to visitors, among them the Golden Hall, a magnificent room with an ornate, gilded ceiling. The gate and gardens are free to walk through, and the park around it is pleasant.
Read the complete Bückeburg palace sight write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
79 km in you reach Bückeburg palace sight. Next is Porta Westfalica view road.
Here the Weser river does something that rivers in the north German plain rarely do: it cuts through a hill range. The Wiehengebirge arrives from the west and the Wesergebirge from the east, and between them the river has carved a gap about a kilometre wide, the Porta Westfalica, the Westphalian Gate. Behind it the land opens out into the great flat plain toward Hanover and the sea. For centuries this was a natural doorway, and the people who held it controlled the route.
Read the complete Porta Westfalica view road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Porta Westfalica view road, early in the day. Next is Minden river stop.
With about eighty thousand people, it is a real city, with fuel, restaurants, shops and a railway station. The Weser here is wide and calm, with a promenade and a few cafes, and the old cathedral stands on a terrace above the water.
Read the complete Minden river stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Minden river stop sits at 158 km, about halfway. Next is Bad Nenndorf return.
Bad Nenndorf is a spa town that never grew into a resort, and that suits it. It sits in the Schaumburg countryside west of Hanover, at the foot of the low wooded ridge of the Deister, and its trade is sulphurous water. Springs here were developed as a bath in the late eighteenth century under the rulers of Hesse-Kassel, and a park of old trees, colonnades and bathhouses survives from that period. The smell of the water is distinctive, and the baths are still used for health treatments, particularly for joint and skin complaints. The town is quiet, tidy and slightly formal.
Read the complete Bad Nenndorf return write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bad Nenndorf return comes up 197 km in. Next is back to Hannover west.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hannover west gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back to Hannover west closes the day. Next is Hannover south-east.
The Hannover fair grounds, one of the biggest exhibition centres in the world, lie just to the north of Laatzen, and for a few days each year the whole region fills with trade visitors. The dot sits on the southern edge of the city, at the gate of the Laatzen suburb, among a mix of warehouses, shopping centres and tidy residential streets. It is not a place that anyone visits for itself, but it is the right doorstep for a ride east to the Harz, because the autobahn and the quiet back roads both start here.
Read the complete Hannover south-east gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You start here, at road level. Next is Goslar.
Goslar is the town where Harz mining became legend. For more than a thousand years, miners dug silver, lead, copper and zinc from the Rammelsberg hill just outside the town, and the wealth built an imperial city. Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire held court at the Kaiserpfalz, the great palace hall beside the old town, which was built in the eleventh century and rebuilt in the nineteenth. The Rammelsberg mine closed in 1988, after a thousand years of work, and UNESCO listed the mine and the old town in 1992, later adding the water management system of the Upper Harz.
Read the complete Goslar write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Next is Bad Harzburg high road.
Bad Harzburg is where the Harz begins. The town sits at the northern edge of the mountains, where the flat land of the North German plain gives way to a steep wooded wall, and it has been a spa since the nineteenth century, with a brine bath, a park and a casino. A cable car climbs the Burgberg above the town, where the ruins of an eleventh-century imperial castle stand, built by Henry IV and destroyed by the Saxons not long after.
Read the complete Bad Harzburg high road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bad Harzburg high road comes up 355 km in. Next is Wernigerode old town.
Wernigerode calls itself the colourful town of the Harz, and it earns the name: the market square is lined with half-timbered houses painted in warm reds, yellows and greens, with carved beams and crooked upper storeys that lean slightly toward each other. The town hall, built in the fifteenth century, has two slim towers like a fairy-tale building, and the whole place feels as though it had been arranged for a picture book. With about thirty-four thousand inhabitants, it is a lively town with a real life of its own, not simply a museum.
Read the complete Wernigerode old town write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
395 km in you reach Wernigerode old town. Next is Blankenburg return road.
Blankenburg sits under a wall of rock. The town on the northern edge of the Harz is dominated by the Regenstein, a sandstone ridge crowned by the ruins of a fortress, whose rooms are carved from the rock itself, with caves, tunnels and a chapel cut straight into the stone. It is one of the most unusual castles in Germany, and a short walk from the road.
Read the complete Blankenburg return road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Somewhere to get off the bike, 434 km in. Next is Quedlinburg overnight base.
Quedlinburg holds more than a thousand half-timbered houses, and it is hard to take a bad photograph there. The whole old town, with its winding lanes, market square and hilltop castle, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised in 1994, and it has survived largely intact through centuries of wars, partly because it was neglected in East German times and escaped the demolition of the old quarters that happened elsewhere.
Read the complete Quedlinburg overnight base write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Quedlinburg overnight base sits at 474 km, late in the day. Next is Back to Hannover.
Hannover is not the first name that comes to mind when riders talk about great destinations, and it would probably say that is fine. It is a big, calm, practical city of half a million people on the northern edge of the German hills, where the flat North German Plain begins to roll up toward the Deister and the Weser Uplands.
Read the complete Hannover write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Back to Hannover. That is the ride.
Hannover west gate → Stadthagen fuel gate is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stadthagen fuel gate → Bückeburg palace sight is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bückeburg palace sight → Porta Westfalica view road is 13 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Porta Westfalica view road → Minden river stop is 6 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Minden river stop → Bad Nenndorf return is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bad Nenndorf return → back to Hannover west is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back to Hannover west → Hannover south-east gate is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hannover south-east gate → Goslar fuel gate is 87 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Goslar fuel gate → Bad Harzburg high road is 14 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bad Harzburg high road → Wernigerode old town is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wernigerode old town → Blankenburg return road is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Blankenburg return road → Quedlinburg overnight base is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Quedlinburg overnight base → Back to Hannover is 155 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.