Harz Mountain Route from Goslar

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Goslar is where the day begins. Next is Torfhaus.

2. 2. Torfhaus

   There is a point on the B4 where the forest stops pretending and the Harz shows its real face: open moor, stunted spruce, grey sky and, on a clear day, the bald dome of the Brocken on the horizon. Torfhaus is a cluster of buildings on that high plateau, at about eight hundred metres, built around a car park, a few cafés and a visitor centre for the Harz National Park. It has the feel of a place on the edge of something, which is accurate, because until 1990 the inner German border ran only a short distance east, and the Brocken beyond it was a closed military zone with listening posts on the summit.

   Read the complete Torfhaus write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Torfhaus comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Braunlage.

3. 3. Braunlage

   Braunlage is the Harz mountains' main winter town, a place of hotels and guesthouses sitting in a high bowl at around five hundred and sixty metres, ringed by spruce forest. Above it rises the Wurmberg, at 971 metres the highest summit in Lower Saxony, with a cable car, a ski area and, on a clear day, a good view of the Brocken, the Harz's bald and brooding top, which sits across the old inner-German border in Saxony-Anhalt. The Brocken is where Goethe sent Faust and his witches to dance on Walpurgis Night, and the whole region leans happily into the witch theme.

   Read the complete Braunlage write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 38 km into the recorded legs you reach Braunlage. Next is Wernigerode.

4. 4. Wernigerode

   Wernigerode likes to call itself the colourful town of the Harz, and it earns the title. The old town, at the foot of the mountains, has half-timbered houses in every shade of red, yellow, blue and green, carved with figures and inscriptions, and a Gothic town hall with two slim towers that looks like a toy. One of the houses is among the smallest in Germany, squeezed into a gap between two larger buildings, and visitors queue to look at it.

   Read the complete Wernigerode write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Wernigerode, late in the day. Next is Quedlinburg.

5. 5. Quedlinburg

   Quedlinburg is one of the best preserved medieval towns in Germany, with roughly thirteen hundred half-timbered houses, a number that is hard to believe until you have walked its streets. The whole old town, with the castle hill and the abbey church, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1994. The houses date from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and many have been restored with care.

   Read the complete Quedlinburg write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Quedlinburg. That is the ride.