CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. 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 bigger commitment, but the reward is concentrated corner work. 332 km round from Sarstedt - plan on about 5 h 03 of riding. The stops in between: Goslar, Stolberg Harz old road and Nordhausen stop. The climb of the day is Kyffhäuser serpentines.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 77 km this is German Timber Frame Road Central Section, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
This is the flat, fertile ground south-east of Hannover, where the city's suburbs give way to the Hildesheimer Börde, one of the richest farming landscapes in Germany. The soil is loess, a fine, wind-blown dust laid down in the ice age, and it is so deep and so good that sugar beet, wheat and rapeseed grow in enormous fields stretching to the horizon. Sarstedt, a town of nearly nineteen thousand people on the Innerste river, is the largest place nearby, with Giesen and Harsum close by, and the villages are neat and prosperous with brick houses and big farms.
Read the complete Hannover south-east gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hannover south-east is where the day begins. 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.
Goslar is the fuel stop for this leg. Next is Stolberg Harz old road.
Stolberg is a tiny half-timbered town of about fourteen hundred people in a narrow valley on the southern edge of the Harz, so well preserved that people often call it a museum in itself, with houses leaning against each other along the main street and a castle on the hill above. It was the seat of the counts of Stolberg, whose line ran for centuries, and the birthplace of Thomas Müntzer, the preacher and radical leader of the Peasants' War of 1525, who was executed after the battle of Frankenhausen not far to the south.
Read the complete Stolberg Harz old road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 146 km into the recorded legs you reach Stolberg Harz old road. Next is Kyffhäuser serpentines.
Kyffhäuser is a modest range of wooded hills on the border of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, just rising out of the Goldene Aue plain, and it is soaked in legend. The hills are low, but they stand alone above the flat plain, so the views from the top are remarkable.
Read the complete Kyffhäuser serpentines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The high point of this section. Next is Nordhausen reset stop.
Nordhausen is a town of some forty-four thousand people on the southern edge of the Harz, the biggest place for a wide area, and it carries a heavy history that deserves a pause. In the last years of the Second World War the Nazis built a huge underground factory in the nearby Kohnstein hill, where V-2 rockets were assembled by prisoners from the Mittelbau-Dora camp, and thousands died of hunger, disease and brutality. The Dora memorial and museum at the site is a serious, sober place, open to the public. In April 1945 the town itself was destroyed in air raids, and most of the old centre was lost.
Read the complete Nordhausen reset stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Nordhausen reset stop sits at 247 km, about halfway. Next is Osterode food stop.
Osterode am Harz lies on the south-western edge of the Harz mountains, at the point where the hills flatten out into the fields of southern Lower Saxony. It is a practical, friendly town of about twenty thousand people, with fuel, supermarkets and several places to eat, a sensible spot to refuel the bike and yourself.
Read the complete Osterode food stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Osterode food stop is where this day stops to eat. Next is Back to Hannover.
The dot lies south of Hannover in the valley of the Leine, near Sarstedt and Giesen, where the plain of the Hildesheimer Börde begins. This is one of the most fertile regions of Germany, with deep black loess soil that grows wheat, sugar beet and vegetables, and the horizon is a long line of fields, wind turbines and church spires. It is not a place for bends, but for easy kilometres, and it is where the ride, having visited the Kyffhäuser mountains in Thuringia, finds its way home.
Read the complete Hannover write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back to Hannover closes the day.
Use Hannover south-east gate → Goslar fuel gate as clean positioning. Keep it tidy, ignore impatient traffic and save the enthusiasm for the good road ahead. The value here is not drama; it is arriving at the riding section with space, fuel and concentration intact.
This Goslar fuel gate → Stolberg Harz old road stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.
Stolberg Harz old road → Kyffhäuser serpentines can flow quickly, but only if you keep village limits and junction sightlines sacred. Fast connectors are where rides get untidy when fatigue creeps in.
This Kyffhäuser serpentines → Nordhausen reset stop stretch is for rhythm and scenery. Keep your head up, let the view breathe, and resist turning every open bend into a target. Stop once properly rather than half-stopping everywhere.
Nordhausen reset stop → Osterode food stop is the technical section. Hairpins, gradients and mixed traffic can stack up quickly; use low drama inputs, stay wide of centre lines and expect buses or riders appearing exactly where optimism says they will not.