Harz Edge and Okertal Long Day
A 220 km loop from Hannover south-east
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Why this ride
A real mountain-flavoured day when flatland is not enough. Out of Laatzen and back again: 220 km, roughly 4 h 35 in the saddle. The stops in between: Hildesheim, Goslar old town edge and Torfhaus high road. Okertal bends is the high point.
Roadbook
- Hannover south-east escape
start
The southeastern edge of Hannover is where the city dissolves into the villages of the Calenberg land, and the first miles of this ride are a gentle introduction to it. Laatzen, a town of forty thousand, lies three kilometres away, while Pattensen and Hemmingen sit a little further out, each with its own old village heart and a ring of newer houses. The Leine river meanders through the meadows between them, and its floodplain, wide, green and often shrouded in morning mist, gives the district a quiet, watery character that surprises people who only know the city.
Pattensen has the most to see. Its centre keeps a collection of half-timbered houses around an old church, and the little streets are pleasant for a short wander. A hill south of Hannover called the Kronsberg, which was built up for the Expo of the year 2000, carries a row of wind turbines and a model neighbourhood, and from its top you can see the whole plain and, on a clear day, the faint line of the Harz in the south.
Riding here is easy, and the trick is to keep to the small roads. Lanes between the villages are well surfaced, with gentle bends around fields of sugar beet and wheat, small copses and the occasional avenue of old lime trees. The land is almost flat, so there are no climbs and few surprises, but the soil is some of the best in Germany, and the farms look prosperous. Weekend cyclists are common, and the lanes along the Leine are shared with walkers and dog owners.
The first of the proper hills comes after an hour or so, as the road approaches the Deister and the Weser uplands, and it is a good idea to start with a full tank. Hemmingen and Pattensen have stations and bakeries, and Laatzen has everything. A coffee and a roll at a village bakery, and you are away. Check the forecast, because the plain offers no shelter from a sudden squall, and the sky can turn quickly.
- Hildesheim fuel gate
fuel
Hildesheim looks, from the ring road, like any prosperous middle-sized German city, with chain stores, car dealers and a ring of fuel stations, and that is exactly why it is a useful gate. Over a hundred thousand people live here, the fuel is plentiful, and the town sits in the open farmland of the Hildesheimer Börde, where black soil grows sugar beet and wheat. Filling up here before the Harz means you can take the hills without watching the needle, because once you climb towards Bad Harzburg and the Okertal the villages get small and stations get scarce.
The reason to stay a little longer is the old centre, and the story that goes with it. In March 1945 a bombing raid destroyed most of the historic town, which had been one of the finest collections of half-timbered houses in northern Germany. The market square was rebuilt in the decades after, as a careful copy of what had been there, including the tall Knochenhauer-Amtshaus, a butchers' guildhall with its carved upper floors. It looks old but it is young, and the locals will tell you so with pride. Hildesheim also has two churches, the cathedral and St Michael's, that are both on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Behind the cathedral a wild rose grows against the apse wall, and according to the legend it has been there since the ninth century, when Emperor Louis the Pious founded the bishopric. It was bombed to nothing in 1945, and sent up fresh shoots from the roots afterwards. Whatever you believe about the date, it is a nice story.
For a rider, the pleasure of the place is mostly the way it connects. To the south the Innerste valley and the green wooded ridges of the Harz foothills begin within half an hour, and the roads there turn from straight and fast to tight and shaded. In the morning the sun is behind you as you ride east, and in summer it is warm enough that you want a coffee in the old market before you start. Parking for bikes is easy in the pedestrian zone fringe, but watch the cobbles and the tram-free streets around the centre where one-way systems can confuse a satnav.
- Goslar old town edge
sight
Goslar has been a town of silver and emperors for a thousand years, and its old centre feels like the set of a very long play. The Rammelsberg mine, just south of the town, produced copper, lead, zinc and silver from the early Middle Ages until 1988, making it one of the longest-working mines in history, and the wealth from it paid for the town's splendid half-timbered houses, its guildhalls and its churches. UNESCO has listed both the mine and the old town as World Heritage.
In the eleventh century German emperors made Goslar a favoured residence, building a great imperial palace, the Kaiserpfalz, which was heavily restored in the nineteenth century and now stands in a green park at the foot of the town. In front of it sits a pair of equestrian statues of emperors in bronze and gilt. The market square is the heart of the old town, dominated by the town hall and the Glockenspiel, which plays a tune and shows figures of miners several times a day.
The road in from the north skirts the edge of the Harz mountains, the highest range in northern Germany. The Harz is a low but rugged upland of spruce forest, granite outcrops and deep valleys, and the roads that climb into it are a motorcyclist's dream, with long sweeping bends and tight hairpins, and good tarmac on the main routes. Weekends and holidays bring plenty of riders and tourists, and the best time is a weekday morning in spring or autumn. Weather in the hills changes fast, and fog and drizzle can arrive in minutes, so carry a waterproof layer.
Goslar is a town of nearly forty-four thousand and has fuel stations, supermarkets and many cafés, so you can top up before you go up. Langelsheim and Bad Harzburg, both within ten kilometres, have more. Park outside the pedestrian core, where the streets are cobbled and narrow, and walk in to the square. Try a plate of the regional speciality, Harzer cheese, a pungent small round cheese, if you are brave. Then leave time for the climb. The hills are waiting just beyond the last roofs.
- Okertal bends
pass
The Oker comes out of the high Harz in a hurry, and the road through its valley follows the river's rush from the dam above down to the plain at Goslar. The valley is narrow, steep and wooded, with granite crags poking through the spruce above the road, and for a few kilometres it feels like a small Alpine gorge dropped into northern Germany. It is one of the best known bike roads in the Harz, and on a fine weekend you will see that the riders know it.
The bends are the point. The road follows the river in a long series of tight curves, some of them blind, with the water on one side and rock on the other, and the gradient is gentle but constant. The surface is mostly good, though the shaded sections hold damp and can have gravel washed down from the slopes after rain. A speed limit and enforcement are not unknown here, and the road has seen its share of accidents, so a measured pace pays off. Because the valley is narrow, the road is not wide, and you will meet coaches, cyclists and walkers at some of the pull-offs.
Geology is the story. The granite of the Brocken massif, a large mass of molten rock that cooled underground some three hundred million years ago, has been exposed by the river and carved into crags and boulders. A reservoir, built in the 1950s, fills the upper valley with dark green water and holds back the floods that once raced down the Oker, and there is a waterfall at Romkerhall, said to be the highest in the Harz, which drops in a long, thin stream over a rock lip. The spruce forest here has suffered from bark beetle in recent years, and the bare grey slopes are a reminder of how much the climate has shifted.
Services on the valley road are limited to a couple of small inns and kiosks near the reservoir and the waterfall. Goslar, about six kilometres away, is the nearest larger town, with fuel stations, supermarkets and a fine old centre that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Altenau and Bad Harzburg are close too. Fill up before the valley, and bring a warm layer. Early on a weekday, when the mist lingers in the trees, it is a very good road.
- Torfhaus high road
photo
Torfhaus is where the Harz stops pretending to be a gentle hill country. The settlement is little more than a cluster of buildings strung along the B4 at somewhere around 800 metres, between Bad Harzburg on the northern edge and Braunlage to the south, and it stands on open moorland where the spruce forest gives way to bog and wind. On a clear day the Brocken, at 1,141 metres the highest summit in northern Germany, stands over the horizon as a bald, slightly sinister dome, and it is the reason most people stop here. On a bad day you will see nothing at all, because this is one of the foggiest and wettest corners of the country.
The climb from Bad Harzburg is the part a rider remembers. The B4 leaves the town in a series of long, well-built bends through beech and then spruce forest, and the temperature falls with every few hundred metres. In early spring there can still be snow beside the road when it is dry and warm in the lowlands, so check the weather and carry a layer. Surfaces are good, but this is a popular road for cars, camper vans and other bikes, and a Saturday afternoon in summer can mean a slow convoy behind a lorry. A weekday morning, or early evening when the day-trippers have left, is when you get the road for yourself.
Torfhaus has a National Park information centre and a few places for coffee and sausage, and a short marked walk across the moor to a lookout point. Goethe walked up to the Brocken from here in the winter of 1777, which is why the main path to the summit is still called the Goetheweg. The Brocken has a long literary reputation: in the old stories it is where witches gather on Walpurgis Night at the end of April, and you can still buy witch dolls at every kiosk in the Harz. The nearest proper fuel is down in Bad Harzburg or in Braunlage, so do not count on filling a tank on the hill, and bring a warm drink. The wind up here finds every gap in your jacket.
- Bad Harzburg food stop
food
Bad Harzburg is a spa town at the northern gate of the Harz, a place of grand villas, a Kurpark, a casino and, on the hill behind it, a cable car that carries visitors to the ruins of a medieval castle. The castle, called the Harzburg, was built in the eleventh century by Emperor Henry the Fourth as part of his campaign to control the Saxon lands, and when the Saxon nobles rebelled in 1074 they destroyed it. The ruin is mostly a few walls and a tower stump now, but the place has a dramatic position, and a viewing area gives a wide look over the plain to the north.
On the same hill stands the Canossa Column, a granite pillar put up in 1877 by order of Bismarck, who wanted to remind everyone of the moment when his chancellorship refused to bend to Rome. It carries a line from his speech, famous in German politics: we will not go to Canossa. You do not have to share his views to enjoy the quiet woods around it, and the walk up is short and easy.
The town's other claim is its water. Brine springs have been used here since the nineteenth century, and the spa buildings, pump rooms and promenades speak of the age when doctors prescribed walks and mineral water for almost everything. The centre today is lively and a bit old-fashioned in a pleasant way, with cafés serving cake, restaurants with Harz specialities such as game and trout, and shops selling local sausages. A little waterfall called the Radau falls in a ravine near the edge of town and is an easy walk.
As a food stop it is a good one, with about twenty-three thousand people, fuel stations, supermarkets and many places to sit down. Parking a motorbike near the pedestrian zone is straightforward, and the cobbles in the centre are short. Weekends in good weather are busy, as riders from Hanover, Brunswick and Hamburg arrive in numbers, and the town can be filled with the sound of engines, so a weekday gives more room to breathe. After a meal, the climb into the hills begins at once, and the road toward Torfhaus and the high Harz gets steep and bendy within minutes.
- Back to Hannover
finish
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.
The city was rebuilt after heavy wartime bombing, so much of the centre is plain postwar architecture, but there are good pockets. The Herrenhausen Gardens, a baroque garden laid out for the electors of Hanover, are lovely, and the royal family of Hanover became the kings of Great Britain in 1714, which is why English monarchs from George I to Victoria share a German city's name. The New Town Hall, with its green dome and an inclined lift that climbs inside it, offers a view across the whole city. Look out for the red thread painted on the pavement that leads you through the sights.
As a ride base, the city is excellent. Within an hour you are in the hills: the Deister, with its wooded ridges and little roads, the Extertal and Lippe uplands to the southwest, and the Oker valley and Harz mountains to the southeast. The terrain is rolling rather than mountainous, with bends through beech and oak woods and open views over farmland. Weekdays are quiet, while summer weekends bring crowds of other bikes. Roads are well surfaced, though speed cameras are common near villages and on straight stretches.
You will find fuel stations everywhere, including on the road to Laatzen and Pattensen, and excellent bakeries for an early start. Food here is straightforward, with Hannoveraner sausage and bread, and in spring there is asparagus on every menu. A stop in the old town near the Marktkirche gives you cobbles, half-timbered houses and a coffee.