Porta Westfalica and Schaumburg Ridge
A 151 km loop from Hannover west
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Why this ride
Compact western drama without wasting the whole day. A 151 km loop that starts and ends near Seelze, about 3 h 08 of riding. On the way it passes Bad Nenndorf, Bückeburg palace sight and Minden river stop. The climb of the day is Porta Westfalica ridge. The line favours views over speed.
Roadbook
- Hannover west gate
start
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.
The city itself deserves more than a glance. Hannover is better known for trade fairs than for beauty, and the Messe, the biggest exhibition ground in the world, fills the south-east of town, but the older story is more interesting. In 1714 the elector of Hannover became King George I of Great Britain, and for more than a century the two countries were linked under one crown. The Herrenhausen Gardens, laid out for the electors in the baroque style, are one of the finest in Europe, with clipped hedges, fountains and a long avenue of lime trees. Hannover is also the home of the Bahlsen biscuit and a well-known school of industrial design.
The landscape west of the city is the north German plain turning into the first low ridges of the uplands. Roads are generally straight and fast across the flat sections, then wind through villages and over low ridges in the Weser and Deister hills, with brick farmhouses and half-timbered barns. Tree-lined lanes shade the road in summer, and the surface is generally good, though mud from farm vehicles can be slippery. Wind can be strong on open stretches.
Seelze, with about thirty-three thousand people, has fuel stations, supermarkets and bakeries, and the larger city of Hannover supplies anything else. A good coffee and a slice of cake in a local bakery is the standard German start to a ride. Spring and autumn offer the best light, while winter brings fog and ice, and in summer weekends the roads of the Weser hills fill with motorcyclists, so choose a weekday when you can.
- Bad Nenndorf fuel gate
fuel
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.
There is a darker chapter in its past. After the Second World War a British interrogation centre operated in the town, and the treatment of prisoners there caused a scandal back in Britain. It is a reminder that even peaceful spa towns have layers of history. Today the town is calm, and the surroundings, with farmland, small villages and castles such as the one at nearby Rodenberg, are good for relaxed riding.
The road system around Bad Nenndorf is a web of secondary roads that run through the lowland between the Deister and the Weser hills. The surface is generally smooth, and bends are gentle, passing through villages with half-timbered houses and brick churches. Traffic is light outside commuter hours, and the main risk is agricultural machinery in the harvest season. To the south, the Deister ridge, about twenty kilometres long, offers forested roads and walking trails, while to the north the Steinhuder Meer, the largest lake in Lower Saxony, is a popular day out.
For the rider, the town is a handy break. It has about ten thousand people, so fuel stations, bakeries and cafés are plentiful, and it is a good place for a coffee or a late breakfast before heading on. A walk through the spa gardens takes ten minutes and is an easy way to loosen up. Spring and early autumn are the best times for the ride, when the fields are green or golden and the light is soft. In summer, cafés set tables in the park, and in the evening the town falls quiet, so there is no need to hurry.
- Bückeburg palace sight
scenic
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.
The town and palace had a surprising cultural life. Johann Gottfried Herder, the philosopher, served as court preacher here in the 1770s, and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, a son of Johann Sebastian, spent most of his career as a court musician in Bückeburg. His music is occasionally played in the palace, and a small museum recalls the family. Another sight is the princely mausoleum, a neo-Romanesque building in the park with a vast golden mosaic dome that gleams as you step inside, one of the most striking interiors in Lower Saxony.
For the rider, Bückeburg is a short stop and a gentle one. The palace sits right in the town, so park nearby and walk, and the surrounding streets are pleasant and quiet. There are cafes on the market square, including a good one for cake, and fuel is available on the edge of town. The ride from here goes through the Weser Hills or towards Minden, over small roads with a few bends and not much traffic.
On a fine afternoon, sit by the moat and look at the reflection of the palace in the water. In early summer the garden is full of roses, and the trees are in full leaf. The area around Bückeburg is rich in small museums and manor houses, and a visit to any of them offers a glimpse of the old, small German states, with their courts, orchestras and eccentric rulers, before unification swept them away. It is a quiet history, and it fits well with a quiet town.
- Minden river stop
swim
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.
Minden is the place where one great waterway crosses another. The Mittelland Canal, which links the Rhine and the Elbe, runs across the Weser on a huge aqueduct, so that ships pass over the river high above the heads of anyone on the bank. The first bridge dates from 1914, and a second one was built in the 1990s, and a visit to the site on a weekday often means a glimpse of a barge sailing across. The Weser itself is a busy waterway, and the lock and the old harbour are worth a walk.
The cathedral is a fine Gothic hall church, rebuilt after the war, and the old town has a fair number of historic buildings, including the Rathaus and several handsome houses on the Weser embankment. Just north of the city, the Porta Westfalica, a narrow gorge between the Wiehengebirge and the Weser Hills, is marked by a monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I, standing on a hilltop and visible from far away. The colossal figure inside a stone canopy dominates the gap, and the view from the terrace is excellent.
The ride from Minden is gentle and pleasant, along the river or over the hills. The road to the Porta passes through woods, with a few bends and a smooth surface. There are bathing places on the river and the lakes nearby, but the Weser itself is not clean enough for swimming and has strong currents. Pick a designated spot and read the signs. A stop at the river terrace with a coffee, watching barges and cyclists drift by, is a pleasant way to pass the time before moving on.
- Porta Westfalica ridge
pass
The ridge above the Porta Westfalica is where the Wiehengebirge, a long thin line of hills running east to west, comes to an abrupt end at the Weser river. Seen on a map, the range looks like a ruled line suddenly cut by a knife. In fact it is a belt of Jurassic limestone and sandstone, tilted and eroded over millions of years, and the river found its way through at the weakest point. That geology is the reason the road along the crest is so quietly satisfying: it follows a sharp edge, with steep wooded slopes falling away to the north and gentler land to the south.
The ridge also carries a heavier history. Late in the Second World War, the hills near Hausberge and Barkhausen were used to build underground production halls in old mine workings, using forced labour from a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. The tunnels are still there, and a small memorial in the area records what happened. It is an uncomfortable fact to find in such a calm woodland, and it deserves a minute of quiet before you ride on.
Today the road is a pleasant, winding country route. It rises through beech and oak in a series of gentle bends, passes a television tower and a couple of old inns, and comes out at clearings with views across the plain toward Minden, whose cathedral and flat roofs lie to the north. The Mittelland Canal, one of Germany's great waterways, crosses the Weser near Minden in an aqueduct, a surprisingly good thing to watch from above if a barge is passing. The surface is mostly smooth, although tree roots lift the verge in places, and some corners are blind. On warm weekends there are plenty of walkers and cyclists, so the best time is a weekday morning.
Services are down in the valley rather than on the ridge. Porta Westfalica has fuel stations and supermarkets, and nearby Minden has a bigger choice, with a handsome old river town centre and a long record as a Prussian fortress and Weser port. Bad Oeynhausen, about nine kilometres away, is a spa town with a large park. Fill up before climbing, and bring water.
- Rinteln coffee road
food
Some stops exist to fill the gap between one good road and the next, and the coffee road in Rinteln is one of those. It runs along the edge of the town where the Weser valley is flat and the lanes are lined with orchards, plain houses and the occasional old half-timbered farm. Nothing here is dramatic, which is exactly the point. After the bends of the hills, it is a pleasant way to slow the pulse.
Rinteln is a good place to find coffee, because it is a town people actually live in rather than a tourist set. The market square has half a dozen bakeries and cafés with tables outside in fair weather, and the Saturday market brings farmers from the surrounding Schaumburg area with vegetables, eggs and sausage. The regional taste leans to the plain and hearty: rye bread, ham, and in autumn plum cake, which Germans take seriously, sold in huge trays by the slice. The pastries are very good, and the prices are low compared with a big city.
The riding in and out is simple. The roads from the hills drop gently into the valley, and a few kilometres of straight, quiet road run along the river. Sheep and horses graze on the meadows by the water, and in spring the verges are full of dandelions and cow parsley. Expect cyclists on the river path and farm vehicles at harvest time. The surface is generally fine, with a few patches near the old bridges.
You will not struggle for services. Rinteln has fuel, supermarkets and restaurants, and the market square is within a short walk of any parking place. Look up at the buildings around the square, where carved beams show the old trading wealth of the town. The Nikolaikirche, a large Gothic church, stands close by and is worth a brief visit if it is open. Take your time with the coffee and enjoy the pause, because the next stretch of road into the Weser Hills is a great deal more serious.
- Back to Hannover
finish
Seelze sits on the western edge of Hannover, where the Leine river and the Mittelland Canal run almost side by side across a flat plain, and its principal claim on the map is as a railway town. A huge marshalling yard has long dominated its southern flank, and the freight trains that rumble in and out give the place a faintly industrial rhythm. The countryside beyond is quiet, with fields, poplars and farm tracks, and a long, low line of woodland on the horizon.
That line is the Deister, a wooded ridge about fifteen kilometres to the south-west, which was once a centre of coal mining and is now a favourite of local walkers and mountain bikers. A little farther north, the Steinhuder Meer, the largest lake in Lower Saxony, is a shallow, reed-fringed expanse, popular with sailors and with flocks of migrating birds. Wunstorf, a small town nearby, has a Romanesque abbey church and an air base that occasionally brings giant transport planes low over the roads.
The ride that ends here has visited two great gaps in the hills. The Porta Westfalica is where the Weser breaks through the Wiehengebirge and the Wesergebirge, and a huge monument to Kaiser Wilhelm I, completed in 1896, stands on one side of the gap, with a view over the valley and the plain beyond. The Solling is a quiet upland forest further south, a landscape of beech and spruce with narrow roads and almost no traffic.
The riding in the Seelze district is flat and plain, and the main hazards are farm vehicles, cyclists and wind. In summer, the evening light on the fields is excellent, and the mist rises from the Leine in the early morning. Speed cameras guard some of the larger roads, and road works are common in the area.
Fuel is easy in Seelze and Letter, with stations on the main roads and supermarkets in the centre. Cafes and bakeries are found in most of the villages. Hannover's city centre is only a few kilometres away, so a last coffee in the old town, around the Marktkirche, is an option.