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 361 km round trip from Clausthal-Zellerfeld - roughly 5 h 45 in the saddle. On the way it passes Fagus Factory in Alfeld, Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey, Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe and back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey. The line favours views over speed.
The two belong to the same story. The Upper Harz was one of the great silver and lead mining districts of Europe, and its engineers built an astonishing network of ponds, ditches and tunnels to bring water to the wheels that drove the pumps and hoists. That water system is part of the UNESCO listing, which took in Rammelsberg and Goslar in 1992 and was later extended to cover the Upper Harz. Today the ponds look like natural lakes, and it takes a moment to realise that someone dug every channel by hand.
Read the complete Mines of Rammelsberg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mines of Rammelsberg is where the day begins. 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 comes up about 53 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 99 km into the recorded legs you reach Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey. 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, about halfway. 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.
back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey sits at 230 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 307 km into the recorded legs. Next is Mines of Rammelsberg.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mines of Rammelsberg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mines of Rammelsberg closes the day.
Mines of Rammelsberg → Fagus Factory in Alfeld is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fagus Factory in Alfeld → Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey → Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe → back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey is 81 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey → back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fagus Factory in Alfeld → Mines of Rammelsberg is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.