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 393 km round trip from Quedlinburg - roughly 7 h 17 in the saddle. The stops in between: Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of, Hainich and back through Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 67 km this is German Timber Frame Road Central Section, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
High on a rock above Quedlinburg stands the Collegiate Church of St Servatius, a heavy Romanesque church that is one of the most important of its kind in Germany. The first church on the hill was connected to the Ottonian kings, and Henry the Fowler, the first king of the East Frankish realm in the early tenth century, was buried here. His widow Mathilda founded a convent of noblewomen on the site, which became powerful, with abbesses who were often relatives of the emperors and ran a small state of their own.
Read the complete Collegiate Church write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Collegiate Church is where the day begins. Next is Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of.
Goslar is a small city at the northern edge of the Harz, and it is hard to overstate how much money and power sat here in the Middle Ages. The Rammelsberg hill, just south of the town, held a vast body of silver, lead, copper and zinc ore, and mining went on for about a thousand years, until the mine closed in 1988. The Ottonian and Salian emperors built their palace in Goslar because the silver paid for it. The imperial palace, the Kaiserpfalz, still stands in a big, over-restored form on the edge of the old town. UNESCO listed the mine and the old town together in 1992, and in 2010 the Upper Harz water system was added to the same site.
Read the complete Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of comes up about 67 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hainich.
Hainich is a long, low ridge of beech forest in the middle of Germany, and it has the distinction of being one of the few places in Europe where beech trees have been left to grow old. The national park, established in 1997, covers a large part of the ridge, and its oldest stands are part of the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and other Regions of Europe, a UNESCO listing. You notice the difference at once: tall, straight silver trunks, massive fallen logs covered in fungi, and a forest floor that smells of mould and mushrooms.
Read the complete Hainich write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 199 km into the recorded legs you reach Hainich. Next is back through Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of, late in the day. Next is Collegiate Church.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Collegiate Church write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Collegiate Church. That is the ride.
Collegiate Church → Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of is 67 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of → Hainich is 132 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Hainich → back through Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of is 129 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of → Collegiate Church is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.