The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
313 km from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, about 5 h 10 of riding. The stops in between: Linderhof Castle, Rose Island, Unfriedshausen and back through Rose Island. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,600 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Scenic road chapters
German Alpine Road
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 27 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
Chapter facts
Length
27 km
Named road
German Alpine Road
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. King's House on Schachen
This is one of the few royal residences in Europe that you cannot reach by any road, and King Ludwig II of Bavaria would have liked it that way. The King's House on Schachen stands on a high alpine meadow at about 1,866 metres in the Wetterstein mountains, south of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, below the jagged walls of the range that culminates in the Zugspitze. Ludwig had it built between 1869 and 1872 as a mountain retreat, and from the outside it looks like a modest Swiss chalet. Inside, upstairs, is a fantasy: the Turkish Hall, a room of blue, gold and red, with a fountain, peacock-feather fans, divans and stained glass, where the king liked to celebrate his birthday dressed in oriental costume while his servants smoked hookahs.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
King's House on Schachen is where the day begins. Next is Linderhof Castle.
2. Linderhof Castle
Of all the palaces King Ludwig II of Bavaria dreamed up, Linderhof is the only one he saw finished, and it is the one he actually lived in for long periods. Hidden in the Graswang valley in the Ammergau Alps, it is a small, extravagant rococo villa inspired by Versailles, with gilded rooms, a hall of mirrors and a dining table that rose from the kitchen below so that the shy king could eat without seeing servants. The park around it is full of follies: a Moorish kiosk, a Moroccan house and, most famous of all, the Venus Grotto, an artificial cave with a lake, a shell-shaped boat and coloured lighting, built so Ludwig could imagine himself in a Wagner opera. Linderhof belongs to the group of Ludwig's palaces recently listed by UNESCO.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Linderhof Castle comes up 47 km in. Next is Rose Island.
3. Rose Island
Lake Starnberg, south-west of Munich, is the lake where Bavaria's Fairy Tale King met his end. Ludwig II drowned in its waters near Berg in 1886, in circumstances that are still debated, and a cross stands in the lake where his body was found. On the opposite shore, near Feldafing, lies the small Roseninsel, or Rose Island, the only island in the lake. Ludwig's father Maximilian II had a little villa built there, surrounded by a rose garden, and Ludwig used it as a retreat, sometimes meeting his cousin, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as Sisi, who spent her childhood at nearby Possenhofen.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
93 km in you reach Rose Island. Next is Unfriedshausen.
4. Unfriedshausen
Unfriedshausen is a hamlet in the rolling farmland west of the Ammersee, part of the municipality of Geltendorf in the Landsberg district of Bavaria, and if you have never heard of it, you are in good company. This is the gentle, prosperous countryside between Munich and Augsburg, a patchwork of fields, meadows, spruce woods, onion-domed churches and farmhouses with balconies full of geraniums, and it is the kind of place where the main event of the day might be a tractor crossing the road.