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 285 km round trip from Altenberg - roughly 5 h 14 in the saddle. On the way it passes Marienberg Mining Town, Karlovy Vary and back through Marienberg Mining Town. It crosses from Germany into Czechia - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Lauenstein stands on a rock above the Müglitz valley in the eastern Erzgebirge, where the mountains tilt down toward Saxony and the Czech border is only a few kilometres off. The castle, a medieval stronghold that grew into a Renaissance residence, was long the seat of the Bünau family, a powerful Saxon dynasty, and its administrative centre controlled the surrounding district, with its farms, forests and mines. The little town gathered at its feet, with narrow lanes and old houses. Today the castle is a museum, with a dramatic position above the valley.
Read the complete Lauenstein Administrative Centre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Lauenstein Administrative Centre is where the day begins. Next is Marienberg Mining Town.
In 1521 Duke Heinrich of Saxony founded a new town in the Ore Mountains to house miners drawn by recent silver strikes, and he had it laid out on a regular grid around a huge square market place, following Renaissance ideas of the ideal city. Marienberg is the result, and its plan is still clearly visible, with straight streets, the town church, the Zschopau gate and a stretch of town wall. The town is part of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region, the cross-border World Heritage Site inscribed in 2019, which recognises eight hundred years of mining in these mountains.
Read the complete Marienberg Mining Town write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Marienberg Mining Town comes up about 71 km into the recorded legs. Next is Karlovy Vary.
Legend has it that Emperor Charles IV was out hunting in the forests of western Bohemia in the fourteenth century when a stag he was chasing, or in some versions one of his hounds, fell into a pool of scalding water, and that is how the hot springs of Karlovy Vary were found. Whatever the truth, the town that grew up around them bears his name, Karlsbad in German, and by the nineteenth century it had become one of the most fashionable spas in Europe, visited by tsars, composers, poets and the cream of European society. In 2021, it became part of the UNESCO listing of the Great Spa Towns of Europe.
Read the complete Karlovy Vary write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 143 km into the recorded legs you reach Karlovy Vary. Next is back through Marienberg Mining Town.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Marienberg Mining Town write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Marienberg Mining Town, late in the day. Next is Lauenstein Administrative Centre.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Lauenstein Administrative Centre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Lauenstein Administrative Centre. That is the ride.
Lauenstein Administrative Centre → Marienberg Mining Town is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Marienberg Mining Town → Karlovy Vary is 72 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Karlovy Vary → back through Marienberg Mining Town is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Marienberg Mining Town → Lauenstein Administrative Centre is 71 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.