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.
From Annaberg-Buchholz it runs 188 km to Annaberg-Buchholz; allow about 3 h 40 of riding. The stops in between: Mědník Hill Mining Landscape, Jáchymov Mining Landscape, Karlovy Vary and The Red Tower of Death. It crosses from Germany into Czechia - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 25 km this is Castle Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
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 Mědník Hill Mining Landscape.
Mědník is a small, steep hill on the Czech side of the Ore Mountains, or Krušné hory, the range that forms the border between Bohemia and Saxony. It rises above the village of Měděnec, whose name, like the hill's, comes from the Czech word for copper. For centuries, miners tunnelled into the hill for copper and iron ore, and the hill is now part of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region, inscribed by UNESCO in 2019 as a cross-border site.
Read the complete Mědník Hill Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mědník Hill Mining Landscape comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Jáchymov Mining Landscape.
The word dollar comes from this small town in the Ore Mountains. In the early sixteenth century, the silver mines of Jáchymov, then called Joachimsthal, were among the richest in Europe, and the coins minted here were called Joachimsthaler, shortened to thaler, which became daler and eventually dollar. The town grew rapidly, with thousands of miners, and it is now one component of the World Heritage inscription for the Erzgebirge mining region, shared between the Czech Republic and Germany. Its later history is darker and stranger.
Read the complete Jáchymov Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 52 km into the recorded legs you reach Jáchymov Mining Landscape. 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.
Karlovy Vary, about halfway. Next is The Red Tower of Death.
The name sounds like a horror film, and the reality was grim enough. In the 1950s, the communist government of Czechoslovakia sent tens of thousands of political prisoners to labour camps in the Jáchymov region to mine uranium for the Soviet nuclear programme. In a red brick building near Ostrov, known as the Red Tower of Death, prisoners crushed and sorted uranium ore by hand, without protection, exposed to dust and radiation. Many died or suffered lasting illness. The building is now a memorial, part of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region World Heritage listing, and a powerful reminder of the human cost of the Cold War.
Read the complete The Red Tower of Death write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Red Tower of Death sits at 84 km, 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 comes up about 113 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Jáchymov Mining Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Jáchymov Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 136 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Jáchymov Mining Landscape. Next is back through Mědník Hill Mining Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mědník Hill Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mědník Hill Mining Landscape, late in the day. 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.
The route ends here after 188 km.
Pöhlberg Mining Landscape → Mědník Hill Mining Landscape is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mědník Hill Mining Landscape → Jáchymov Mining Landscape is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Jáchymov Mining Landscape → Karlovy Vary is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Karlovy Vary → The Red Tower of Death is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Red Tower of Death → back through Karlovy Vary is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Karlovy Vary → back through Jáchymov Mining Landscape is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Jáchymov Mining Landscape → back through Mědník Hill Mining Landscape is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Mědník Hill Mining Landscape → Pöhlberg Mining Landscape is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.