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.
Out of Munich and back again: 325 km, roughly 4 h 20 in the saddle. It goes by way of Samerberg, Berchtesgaden and Bad Endorf. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. Long stretches are under trees.
23 km on German Alpine Road.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Munich is closer to the Alps than any other German city of its size, and on a clear day with a warm southerly wind called the Föhn, the mountains seem to sit at the end of the street. The wind brings a sharp clarity and headaches for the sensitive, and the locals are used to both. The city lies on the Isar, a river that once ran milky green with glacial water and is now lined with gravel banks where people sunbathe, barbecue and swim in summer. Munich's centre is compact and cheerful, with the twin onion-domed towers of the Frauenkirche, the Rathaus on Marienplatz with its mechanical clock figures, and the Viktualienmarkt for food.
Berchtesgaden sits in the far southeast corner of Germany, in a pocket of Bavaria that pokes into Austria, and the mountains here do not bother to be modest. The Watzmann, at 2,713 metres Germany's second highest mountain, stands above the valley in a long ridge, with the pale wall of the Hochkalter opposite. The town is the end of the German Alpine Road, which runs from Lake Constance, and it feels like the end of the line, with the peaks closing in on all sides. For centuries the local economy rested on salt, and the salt mine, worked since the sixteenth century, is open to visitors who put on miners' clothes and slide down the wooden chutes.
Bad Endorf is a spa town in the Chiemgau, a few kilometres west of the Chiemsee, and on a long day to Berchtesgaden it is the kind of place where you top up the tank and keep moving. That is not an insult. The town is tidy and functional, with fuel, bakeries and supermarkets, and it sits in some of the most pleasant rolling country in southern Bavaria, so the stop costs you nothing in scenery.
Return visit. Read the place description above.