CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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.
From Garbsen-Mitte it runs 462 km to Sarstedt; allow about 7 h 20 of riding. The stops in between: Wunstorf, Loccum abbey sight and Mardorf lake road. The climbs: Rehburg hills and Kyffhäuser serpentines. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
30 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it. Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 11 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
For 82 km this is German Timber Frame Road Central Section, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it — expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Garbsen is a big, flat suburb of Hannover, made mostly of new housing, shopping streets and industry, and it has no pretensions beyond being a practical place to start. The Mittelland Canal runs close by, carrying barges between the Rhine and the Elbe, and the whole area lies on the edge of the North German Plain, where the sky takes up most of the view. That, however, is the point. Within twenty minutes you are among fields, woods and moorland, and the city has gone.
Read the complete Hannover north-west edge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hannover north-west edge is where the day begins. Next is Wunstorf.
Wunstorf has an airbase and a lake, and neither is what you expect from the name. The town, with about forty-two thousand people, lies on the Leine west of Hanover, and the nearby military airfield is home to the German Air Force's transport aircraft. The lake is the Steinhuder Meer, a short ride to the north, the largest lake in north-west Germany and so shallow that you can nearly wade across it. It is a popular place for sailing, with the little town of Steinhude on its southern shore selling smoked eel to visitors.
Read the complete Wunstorf fuel gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wunstorf is the fuel stop for this leg. Next is Loccum abbey sight.
The old Cistercian abbey of Loccum stands among the fields and forests of western Lower Saxony, about four kilometres from the town of Rehburg-Loccum, and it has been here since 1163. That alone makes it an unusual place, since it survived the Reformation and became Protestant without being dissolved, and it is still a Lutheran monastic community, where trainee pastors study and monks live much as they did centuries ago. The long brick church, with its plain, high-vaulted interior, is a fine example of the austere Cistercian style.
Read the complete Loccum abbey sight write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
86 km in you reach Loccum abbey sight. Next is Rehburg hills.
Rehburg-Loccum lies on the north edge of the Rehburg hills, a modest ridge of wooded sandstone that rises from the flat plain west of Hannover, and for riders from the city it is the nearest thing to a mountain. The hills are not high by any measure, but they are covered in beech and oak, and the roads that cross them climb and twist in a way the plain never does, with a sense of enclosure and a welcome shade in summer.
Read the complete Rehburg hills write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The high point of this section. Next is Mardorf lake road.
The Steinhuder Meer is the biggest lake in Lower Saxony, and it is shockingly shallow: for most of its area it is no more than a couple of metres deep, so that on a hot day you can wade a long way out and still stand. Mardorf, on the north shore, is the beach side, with a long strip of sand, a promenade and a swimming area, and the water warms up quickly in summer, so it is a pleasant place to cool off after a day in the saddle.
Read the complete Mardorf lake road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mardorf lake road sits at 171 km, about halfway. Next is Neustadt am Rübenberge food stop.
Neustadt am Rübenberge is a town that spreads wide across the flat country northwest of Hannover, one of the larger municipalities in Lower Saxony by area, with some forty-six thousand people living in the centre and dozens of villages around it. The Leine river slides past the old town, which has a castle called Landestrost from the sixteenth century, and the broad, low plain around it is where the Hanoverian farmers grew their wealth.
Read the complete Neustadt am Rübenberge food stop write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Neustadt am Rübenberge food stop comes up 214 km in. Next is back to Hannover north-west edge.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hannover north-west edge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back to Hannover north-west edge closes the day. Next is Hannover south-east.
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.
You start here, at road level. 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.
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.
Stolberg Harz old road comes up 385 km in. 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.
Kyffhäuser serpentines is the summit of this stretch. 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, late in the day. 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.
Food at 513 km, roughly 10 hours into the riding. 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.
Finish at Back to Hannover. That is the ride.
Hannover north-west edge → Wunstorf fuel gate is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wunstorf fuel gate → Loccum abbey sight is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Loccum abbey sight → Rehburg hills is 5 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Rehburg hills → Mardorf lake road is 11 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mardorf lake road → Neustadt am Rübenberge food stop is 15 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Neustadt am Rübenberge food stop → back to Hannover north-west edge is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back to Hannover north-west edge → Hannover south-east gate is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hannover south-east gate → Goslar fuel gate is 77 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Goslar fuel gate → Stolberg Harz old road is 76 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Stolberg Harz old road → Kyffhäuser serpentines is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kyffhäuser serpentines → Nordhausen reset stop is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Nordhausen reset stop → Osterode food stop is 67 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Osterode food stop → Back to Hannover is 91 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.