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.
334 km from Annaberg-Buchholz to Annaberg-Buchholz, about 6 h 13 of riding. It goes by way of Uranium Mining Landscape, Karlovy Vary, Mariánské Lázne and back through Karlovy Vary. It crosses from Germany into Czechia - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
The Pöhlberg is a basalt cone that stands up from the high Ore Mountains like a bump on a bedspread, and Annaberg-Buchholz lies at its feet. Both belong to the Erzgebirge mining region, which UNESCO listed in 2019 after eight centuries of digging for silver, tin, cobalt and later uranium. Annaberg was founded in the 1490s after a silver strike, and for a few decades it was among the richest places in Saxony. The money is still visible in the town's great late-Gothic hall church, St Anne's, whose tall, ribbed interior feels more like a cathedral than a parish church, and whose altar carvings were paid for by miners and mine owners hoping for luck underground.
Read the complete Pöhlberg Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pöhlberg Mining Landscape is where the day begins. Next is Uranium Mining Landscape.
Look at this landscape and you would never guess what was under it. The land south of Lößnitz and around Bad Schlema is green, pretty and slightly hilly, a foothill of the Ore Mountains with small towns, orchards and the Zwickauer Mulde river slipping through. But between 1946 and 1990 this was the heart of the Wismut mining company, a Soviet-German enterprise that dug uranium on a huge scale for the Soviet atomic programme. East Germany became one of the world's largest uranium producers, and the work left deep shafts, tall spoil heaps and a population who knew what their work was for and rarely spoke about it.
Read the complete Uranium Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Uranium Mining Landscape comes up about 46 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 117 km into the recorded legs you reach Karlovy Vary. Next is Mariánské Lázne.
Goethe fell in love here when he was already in his seventies. In the summer of 1821 and the years that followed, the poet spent his holidays in Marienbad, the spa town now known as Mariánské Lázně, and fell for Ulrike von Levetzow, a young woman of nineteen; his proposal was declined, and on the journey home he wrote the Marienbad Elegy, one of his most moving poems. The town was then at the height of its fame as one of the great spas of Europe, visited by kings, emperors and artists, from Edward VII of Britain to Chopin and Kafka.
Read the complete Mariánské Lázne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mariánské Lázne, about halfway. Next is back through Karlovy Vary.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Karlovy Vary write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Karlovy Vary sits at 190 km, about halfway. Next is back through Uranium Mining Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Uranium Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Uranium Mining Landscape comes up about 287 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pöhlberg Mining Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pöhlberg Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pöhlberg Mining Landscape closes the day.
Pöhlberg Mining Landscape → Uranium Mining Landscape is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Uranium Mining Landscape → Karlovy Vary is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Karlovy Vary → Mariánské Lázne is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mariánské Lázne → back through Karlovy Vary is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Karlovy Vary → back through Uranium Mining Landscape is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Uranium Mining Landscape → Pöhlberg Mining Landscape is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.