Elm Lappwald and Half-Timbered Villages
A 241 km loop from Hannover east edge
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Why this ride
Open sweepers, old towns and enough bends to make it worth the start. 241 km round from Lehrte - plan on about 5 h of riding. The stops in between: Peine, Königslutter Elm road and Helmstedt old town stop. Schöningen ridge is the high point. The line favours views over speed.
Roadbook
- Hannover east edge
start
This is not postcard Germany but working Germany, which has its own appeal. The Mittelland Canal, the big east-west waterway that links the Rhine and the Elbe, runs close by, and barges of a thousand tonnes slide along it as calmly as swans. Misburg, just to the north, was a cement town for a century and still carries traces of that heavy industry, with chalk pits turned into lakes.
Lehrte, a town of forty-four thousand some eight kilometres away, owes its existence to the railway. Lines meeting there in the mid-nineteenth century made it a junction, and the town grew around the crossing of tracks. It is a handy provider of petrol stations, supermarkets and fast food, with a station that still shunts goods trains through its yards. The suburb of Laatzen, near the trade-fair grounds, is the other practical neighbour.
For a motorcyclist the early miles are about escaping. The roads leave the city along straight, flat arteries, with traffic lights and roundabouts and a thread of commuters, and the trick is to get off the main routes quickly onto the lanes between the villages. Within a few kilometres you are on narrow tarmac threading between fields and small woods, past brick farms and the odd wind turbine. The soil is rich loess, dark and fertile, the same soil that made the farmers of the Börde region wealthy, and in summer the grain stands tall and gold.
Weather here is a matter of wind. There is little to stop the westerlies, and on a blustery day the straights are hard work, so give yourself margin. Early on a spring morning, when the air is crisp and the sun low, this is a pleasant start. The way east leads on toward Helmstedt and the edge of the old frontier, so check your fuel and your tyres, and enjoy the open road.
- Peine fuel gate
fuel
Peine is a steel town, and it has never pretended otherwise. A rolling mill has stood on the edge of the town since the nineteenth century, and the smoke, the chimneys and the sound of trains hauling girders still shape the skyline. The people who work in it live in tidy brick streets, and the main square has the honest, unshowy look of a place that makes things rather than sells postcards. As a fuel stop, it fits the mood perfectly: efficient, plain, with all you need and nothing you do not.
The town sits on the flat, rich farmland of the Hildesheim Börde, a landscape of loess soil that is among the most fertile in Germany. Fields of sugar beet, wheat and rape run to the horizon, and the roads across them are straight and fast. The Mittelland Canal, the great east-west waterway, cuts through the town, and watching a long barge slide past between the houses is an unexpected pleasure. In the Middle Ages the bishops of Hildesheim fortified Peine as a border outpost against the dukes of Brunswick, and the two were at war over it more than once, which explains why a flat farm town ever needed walls.
With nearly fifty thousand people, Peine has everything you could ask of a refuelling gate. Petrol stations sit along the main roads, and supermarkets, bakeries and snack bars are easy to find. It is a good moment to check tyre pressure, stow the jacket liner and buy a sandwich for later. Parking is easy, and the old market with its church is a few minutes' walk if you want to see something that is not a pump.
The riding from here is the business. Heading south and east you leave the flat Börde and begin to climb gently toward the low ridges of the Elm and the Harz foothills, and the roads change from long straights to rolling, curving lanes through half-timbered villages. Wind is a factor on the open plain, so expect gusts from the west and a feeling of being pushed. Morning is the best time, with the sun low behind you and the traffic still thin. Take a minute to enjoy the practical charm of a town that has decided to be itself.
- Königslutter Elm road
scenic
Königslutter has a cathedral that looks as if it belongs in Lombardy, and the reason is that the men who built it had been to Italy. The Kaiserdom, a great Romanesque church of pale stone begun in the 1130s, was founded by Emperor Lothar the Third, who is buried inside, and the craftsmen who carved its apse brought with them a style from the south. Round the outside runs a frieze of hunters chasing a stag, with hounds, a boar and an unlikely fox, and by the entrance sit a pair of lions with columns on their backs, one of them with a little man in its paws. They are some of the best medieval sculptures in northern Germany, set in a small Lower Saxon town that gets few crowds.
Behind the town rises the Elm, a long, low ridge of limestone covered in old beech forest. It is a geological curiosity, a fold of ancient seabed lifted above the plain and worn into hollows and caves, and it forms a nature park with an unusual amount of fossil-bearing rock. The beeches, some of them very large, hold deep shade in summer and glow copper in autumn.
The road climbing the Elm is a gentle surprise after the flat farmland to the north. It rises through woods in a series of easy bends, with clear sightlines and a fairly smooth surface, though leaf litter and the odd root-lifted patch call for attention. You will meet walkers and cyclists on sunny weekends, and the forestry trucks that take timber out use some of the roads. At the top you can find clearings with views over fields toward the Harz on a clear day, and the air feels a degree or two cooler than in the town.
The town has about sixteen thousand people, which means fuel stations, supermarkets and bakeries, and there are a few restaurants near the cathedral. Park near the church and walk. Allow time for the carvings in particular, because it is easy to ride past and not realise what you have missed. Early in the day, before the coach tours, the stone is warm in the low sun and the lions look almost alive.
- Helmstedt old town stop
sight
Helmstedt is a town that has lived through several lives. In the sixteenth century it was a university town: the Academia Julia, founded in 1576 by Duke Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, drew scholars from across Europe, and its handsome building, the Juleum, still stands in the old quarter. The university closed in 1810, but the streets kept their half-timbered charm, with lovely house fronts and a little market square that is a pleasure to sit in.
Then came the Cold War. Just a few kilometres east of town at Marienborn was the biggest border crossing between West and East Germany, where the motorway from Hanover to Berlin passed through checkpoints, watchtowers and long queues of trucks. Helmstedt itself was the last West German town on the transit route, a place where drivers filled their tanks and bought their last coffee before the long, tense journey across the other side. The border installations at Marienborn are now a memorial and museum.
Lignite shaped the area too. Open-pit mines ate into the countryside for decades, and the diggings gave up something astonishing: near Schöningen, archaeologists found wooden throwing spears about three hundred thousand years old, some of the oldest hunting weapons ever found, and a museum there tells the story. To the south, just outside town, stand the Lübbensteine, a pair of Stone Age megalithic tombs, huge slabs of rock lying quietly in the woods.
As a rider's stop, Helmstedt is easy. There are filling stations on the roads in, bakeries and cafés around the market, and plenty of parking. The roads in from the west cross the low ridge of the Elm, a wooded upland of beech, with a mix of straight and curving sections, and they carry little traffic outside commuter hours. Park by the old university, and have a slow walk around the old streets. You will see how small a town can hold a great deal of history.
- Schöningen ridge
pass
Schöningen has a reputation that has nothing to do with riding, and it is a startling one. In the 1990s, archaeologists working ahead of the lignite diggers found wooden spears here that were about three hundred thousand years old, the oldest known hunting weapons in the world, along with the bones of horses butchered by the people who threw them. The finds changed what scientists thought early humans could do, since the spears were balanced like modern javelins and made with real skill. A modern museum beside the old mine, shaped like a lump of glass and steel, tells the story and shows a reconstruction of the shore where the hunters worked.
The ridge that carries the road lies on the eastern side of the Elm and Lappwald hills, the low upland that runs near the old border with Saxony-Anhalt. For forty years this was a frontier zone, and the quiet, thinly populated feeling of the villages still carries some of that. The ridge is not high, just a couple of hundred metres, but after the flat farmland it gives long views across fields and wind turbines, and on a clear day you see the outline of the Harz far to the south.
Riding here is open and easy. The road follows the crest and rolls over a number of gentle rises, with wide, forgiving bends and patchy but generally acceptable tarmac. The traffic is light, apart from the occasional coal or farm truck, and the wind is the main thing you notice. It is a country of big skies, harvested fields and church spires, and the light at the end of the day turns the stubble gold. Spring brings the bright yellow of rape and a sharp, green smell.
Schöningen town, a few hundred metres away, has about thirteen thousand people, a handsome old castle and some half-timbered streets, and services are not a problem: fuel stations, supermarkets and bakeries along the main roads, plus a few cafés near the market. Park near the centre and spend ten minutes at the castle. If the museum interests you, allow an hour or two, since it is well done and worth more than a quick glance. Bring a windproof layer, because the ridge is exposed and the weather can change.
- Wolfenbüttel food stop
food
Wolfenbüttel is a town of books and timber. For nearly three centuries the dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel ruled from the castle here, and one of them, Duke August the Younger, built up a library in the seventeenth century that became one of the largest in Europe. The Herzog August Library still stands, and the philosopher and playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing worked in it as librarian in the eighteenth century and wrote part of his drama Nathan the Wise in the town. Its old reading rooms and the remarkable collection of illuminated manuscripts make it one of the few libraries in the world worth visiting for the building alone.
Around the library lies one of the best half-timbered old towns in Germany. More than six hundred timber-framed houses, carved with scrolls, beams and inscriptions, line the streets and canals, and they survived the war largely untouched because the town had no major industry. The Oker river splits into channels around the old centre, giving the place a gentle waterside air, and the lanes between the houses are narrow, cobbled and quiet in the morning. The castle, in the red brick and pale stone of the Renaissance, sits on its own moated island at the edge of the centre.
Wolfenbüttel is also home to one of Germany's best known herbal liqueurs, the Jägermeister, which is made in the town, and the smell of its ingredients can sometimes hang over the east side of the centre. It is a bit of local humour that the dukes' famous library and a stag-labelled digestif share a postcode.
As a food stop the town is easy and generous. It has more than fifty thousand people, so fuel stations, supermarkets and a wide range of cafés, bakeries and restaurants are all close, with tables out in the squares in summer. Local menus lean toward hearty Lower Saxon dishes, with sausage, asparagus in season and plenty of cake. Parking a motorbike near the centre is simple, though the cobbles are slippery after rain and the traffic in the old streets is slow. Give yourself an hour on foot, and aim to be there before the lunchtime crowds. The roads in and out run through flat fields, and the real riding begins after the town, as the land lifts toward the Harz.
- Back to Hannover
finish
On the eastern side of Hannover, the city stretches into leafy suburbs, and the dot lies near the Mittelland Canal, among tidy housing estates and patches of woodland. Hannover is a big, sensible city, rebuilt after heavy bombing in the Second World War, and it has an unexpectedly green heart in the Eilenriede, a city forest of old oaks and beeches, one of the largest urban forests in Europe, where people ride, jog and walk dogs between the lakes and meadows.
The ride from here goes east to the Elm and the Lappwald, two low, wooded ridges near the old border, where half-timbered villages sit among fields and beech woods. Königslutter, nearby, has a magnificent Romanesque cathedral, the Kaiserdom, whose stone carvings include lions and strange creatures, and the town is a good place for an unhurried look. The Harz edge and the Oker valley are the high point of the day: the Oker flows through a narrow gorge of granite and spruce, with a winding road, and a waterfall at Romkerhalle, a popular stop.
The roads of the Elm are quiet, narrow and gently winding, through woods of beech and oak, with farm lanes branching off. The Oker valley road is a classic, with sharp bends and rock walls, though it is busy at weekends, with bikers and cyclists sharing the tarmac. Surfaces vary, and in autumn, wet leaves make corners slippery, so a gentle approach pays off.
Fuel and food are easy on this side of the city. Lehrte and Laatzen, the nearest large towns, have supermarkets, stations and cafes. In the Harz foothills, Bad Harzburg and Goslar are both good for coffee. Goslar, with its imperial palace and half-timbered streets, is a World Heritage site, and an easy and rewarding place to stop.
In summer, the afternoon sun is warm and the evening long. If your trip finishes at dusk, the light on the city's spires and the Eilenriede's canopy makes for a quiet, satisfying arrival.