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.
A 307 km round trip from Baunatal - roughly 4 h 52 in the saddle. The stops in between: Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey, St Mary's Catholic Cathedral and back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey. The line favours views over speed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 75 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
There is a giant on the hill above Kassel, and he has been there since the early eighteenth century. The Hercules statue, a copper figure on top of an octagonal structure and a huge stepped pyramid, crowns the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, which the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel began laying out around 1700 as a statement of his power. Below it, a long cascade of steps and basins sends water tumbling down the hillside, and on certain afternoons from May to early October the water features run for the public in a spectacle that takes well over an hour to reach the bottom. UNESCO listed the park in 2013, and it remains one of the largest hillside parks in Europe.
Read the complete Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe is where the day begins. Next is Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey.
Corvey sits in a loop of the Weser just outside Höxter, a baroque abbey palace set among meadows with the wooded hills of the Solling and the Weser Uplands closing in around it. The baroque part is handsome but not why people come. Hidden behind it, forming the entrance to the church, is a westwork built between 873 and 885, and it is one of the very few Carolingian buildings in the world still standing more or less as it was built.
Read the complete Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey comes up about 81 km into the recorded legs. Next is St Mary's Catholic Cathedral.
In the courtyard of Hildesheim Cathedral, a rose bush climbs the wall of the apse, and the legend says it has been growing there for a thousand years. The "thousand-year rose" is linked to the founding of the bishopric in 815, when, so the story goes, Emperor Louis the Pious hung a reliquary on the branches of a wild rose and found it impossible to remove, taking it as a sign to build a chapel. Whatever the truth, the rose survived the bombing of March 1945, which destroyed the cathedral and much of the old town, and sprouted again from its roots in the rubble. The cathedral and the nearby Church of St Michael were inscribed by UNESCO in 1985 for their outstanding Romanesque architecture and art.
Read the complete St Mary's Catholic Cathedral write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 153 km into the recorded legs you reach St Mary's Catholic Cathedral. Next is back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey, late in the day. Next is Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. That is the ride.
Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe → Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey is 81 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey → St Mary's Catholic Cathedral is 72 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
St Mary's Catholic Cathedral → back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey is 72 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey → Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.