Eastern Harz and Quedlinburg Overnight

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Hannover south-east gate

   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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Hannover south-east is where the day begins. Next is Goslar.

2. 2. Goslar fuel gate

   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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Goslar is the fuel stop for this leg. Next is Bad Harzburg high road.

3. 3. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 94 km into the recorded legs you reach Bad Harzburg high road. Next is Wernigerode old town.

4. 4. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Wernigerode old town, about halfway. Next is Blankenburg return road.

5. 5. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Food at 204 km, roughly 4 hours into the riding. Next is Quedlinburg overnight base.

6. 6. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Quedlinburg overnight base comes up about 150 km into the recorded legs. Next is Back to Hannover.

7. 7. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back to Hannover closes the day.