Why this ride
176 km from Goslar to Goslar, about 3 h 17 of riding. It goes by way of Fagus Factory in Alfeld, St Mary's Catholic Cathedral and back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld.
CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of and St Mary's Catholic Cathedral
Plan this ride
- Recorded distance
- 176 km
- Riding-time estimate
- 3 h 17
- Journey
- Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
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.
Scenic road chapters
Fagus Factory in Alfeld → St Mary's Catholic Cathedral
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.
Chapter facts
- Length
- 33 km
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. 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.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of is where the day begins. Next is Fagus Factory in Alfeld.
2. 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.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Fagus Factory in Alfeld comes up about 55 km into the recorded legs. Next is St Mary's Catholic Cathedral.
3. 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.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 88 km into the recorded legs you reach St Mary's Catholic Cathedral. Next is back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld.
4. back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fagus Factory in Alfeld write-up.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld, late in the day. Next is Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of.
5. 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.
Recorded stop-planning note
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Back at Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of. That is the ride.
Leg by leg
Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of to Fagus Factory in Alfeld
Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of → Fagus Factory in Alfeld is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fagus Factory in Alfeld to St Mary's Catholic Cathedral
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 to back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld
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 to Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of
back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld → Mines of Rammelsberg and Historic Town of is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.