Kiel · Eutin, Lübeck Bay and Old Roads

Lake-country bends with a bay view if the wind behaves.

Open this ride in the planner →

Why this ride

Lake-country bends with a bay view if the wind behaves. The best part sits around Preetz gate, Eutin lake road, Timmendorf bay view, while the most useful town stop keeps the day practical instead of turning it into a fuel or food hunt. Check the OSM map, Google preview and GPX checkpoint order before departure; they use the same waypoint sequence. Ride it with legal pull-offs, patience through villages and enough daylight to stop without rushing.

Roadbook

1. Kiel start

   Kiel is a city that faces the water in every direction. It sits at the head of the Kiel Fjord, a long inlet of the Baltic, and at the eastern end of the Kiel Canal, which cuts across the base of the Jutland peninsula to the North Sea and is the busiest artificial waterway in the world by ship traffic. Cargo ships, tankers and ferries pass in a line, and from the high bridges you can watch giant vessels slide past apparently at roof level. The canal was opened in 1895, and for its size and importance it deserves more visitors than it gets.

   The sea shaped the city's history. Kiel was a German naval base for a century, and the sailors' mutiny of 1918 here sparked the revolution that ended the German Empire. In the Second World War it was bombed so heavily that most of the old centre vanished, so the modern city is mostly postwar, with a sensible but plain look. What you will enjoy is the waterfront, with its ferries to Norway and Sweden, the promenade, the harbour with old sailing ships, and the beaches of the fjord, which are used for swimming from May to September.

   Sailing is the big thing. Every June, Kiel Week turns the whole fjord into a festival of regattas, with thousands of boats, music stages and street food, the largest sailing event in the world, and the city hosted the Olympic sailing competitions in 1936 and 1972. At Laboe, across the fjord, a tall brick tower serves as a naval memorial, and the old submarine U-995 sits on the beach as a museum. The view from the tower over the water is wide and good.

   The riding is flat to gently rolling, with roads around the fjord and into the farmland of Schleswig-Holstein, where fields of rapeseed shine yellow in May and roadside avenues of old beech create tunnels of green. Wind off the Baltic is often strong, and sudden showers come in from the sea. Fuel stations are plentiful, and the city has about two hundred and thirty thousand people. Fish is the thing to eat, with a Fischbrötchen from a harbour stall or a plate of fried herring. Spring and early autumn are best, and Kiel Week is wonderful but crowded, with hotels full for weeks.

2. Eutin sight

   Eutin calls itself the Rose Town, and in summer you can see why, with rose beds in the market square, the park and the front gardens, but its better claim is a small, pale baroque palace on an island in a lake. The palace was the residence of the prince-bishops of Lübeck for several centuries, and it is surrounded by a moat and a landscape park that slopes down to the water of the Great Eutin Lake. In summer an open-air opera festival is staged in the palace gardens, with the lake as a backdrop, and it has done so for decades.

   Eutin has a distinguished cultural connection too. The composer Carl Maria von Weber, whose Freischütz is one of the great German romantic operas, was born here in 1786, and the town remembers him with a monument and a festival. The poet and translator Johann Heinrich Voss, who gave German readers a famous version of Homer, taught at the local school, and the town became known as the Weimar of the North for its circle of writers and thinkers in the late eighteenth century. It is a lot of history for a small place with seventeen thousand people.

   The market square is small and cobbled, and the streets around it have half-timbered houses, bakeries and cafés with outdoor tables. It is a place to walk slowly. As a gate to Holstein Switzerland, it also serves as the starting point for lake roads that run toward Malente, Plön and the Baltic coast. The riding nearby is gentle but constant, with smooth bends, short climbs and views through trees to the lakes. The roads are well kept and, on a weekday, mostly empty. On summer weekends the lake shores are busy with cyclists and families.

   For practical needs, Eutin has plenty: fuel stations at the edge of town, supermarkets and a large choice of cafés. Parking a bike in the centre is simple, though the cobbles around the market need a cautious hand when wet. If you have an hour, walk down to the lake and look back at the palace from the water's edge. In the evening, when the opera audience arrives, the light on the water is soft and gold.

3. Lübeck food

   At the northern edge of the city, in the district around Stockelsdorf, the road leads to the Baltic coast, and the ride begins here, heading north-east through the forests and fields of Ostholstein towards Travemünde, Timmendorfer Strand and the sea.

   The city's cathedral, begun by Henry the Lion in 1173, stands at the southern end of the old town, and the Burgtor gate is on the north side, just before the road leaves the town. The brick Gothic of Lübeck's churches, especially St Mary's, which served as a model for many churches around the Baltic, is the first sight of a style that you will see again and again on the coast, in Wismar, Stralsund and as far as Tallinn. The Salzspeicher, the old salt warehouses beside the river, are a reminder of how the city grew rich.

   The Baltic coast road, which the Germans call the Ostseestraße, is a mixed pleasure. The first stretch is a flat road through farmland, with the sea hidden behind the dunes, and the resort towns along the coast are crowded in summer. But the roads inland, among the hedges and rolling fields, are much quieter and more pleasant. The best time to ride is in the evening or early morning, when the light is soft and the roads are empty.

   Travemünde, at the mouth of the Trave, is the seaside district of Lübeck, with a long beach, a casino and the four-masted barque Passat, which is moored there as a museum ship. Ferries to Scandinavia and the Baltic states leave from the harbour, and the ships coming and going are a fine sight. A walk on the beach promenade, with an ice cream and the sea breeze, makes a good way to start the day.

4. Kiel finish

Where this sits

Rides near here