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 434 km round trip from Vöhl - roughly 6 h 58 in the saddle. The stops in between: Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey, Fagus Factory in Alfeld and St Mary's Catholic Cathedral. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 28 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Beech trees cover the hills of the Kellerwald in north Hesse, and they are old ones. This is one of the places where UNESCO recognised the ancient beech forests of Germany, listed in 2011, because here the trees have been left largely alone, and the forest has the feel of what Central Europe looked like before farming took over. The trunks are smooth and grey, the canopy is high and the floor in spring is covered with a sheet of white wood anemones. In autumn, the leaves turn copper and gold, and the forest is full of light.
Read the complete Kellerwald write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kellerwald is where the day begins. Next is Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe.
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 comes up about 58 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 139 km into the recorded legs you reach Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey. Next is Fagus Factory in Alfeld.
Stand across the railway tracks and look at the Fagus works, and you are looking at one of the buildings where modern architecture started. In 1911 the shoe-last maker Carl Benscheidt hired a young Walter Gropius and his partner Adolf Meyer to design a new factory in Alfeld, in the Leine valley of Lower Saxony. They gave it walls of glass that seem to wrap around the corners with no column to hold them, a radical trick at the time, and the result was so influential that it became a UNESCO site in 2011. The best part: it is still a working factory making shoe lasts, not a museum frozen in place.
Read the complete Fagus Factory in Alfeld write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fagus Factory in Alfeld, about halfway. 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.
St Mary's Catholic Cathedral sits at 194 km, about halfway. Next is back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fagus Factory in Alfeld write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld comes up about 250 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 296 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey. Next is back through 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 through Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, late in the day. Next is Kellerwald.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kellerwald write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 434 km.
Kellerwald → Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe is 58 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
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 → Fagus Factory in Alfeld is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fagus Factory in Alfeld → St Mary's Catholic Cathedral is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
St Mary's Catholic Cathedral → back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld → back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey → back through Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe → Kellerwald is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.