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.
281 km from Schneeberg to Schneeberg, about 5 h 22 of riding. It goes by way of Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works, The Red Tower of Death and back through Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works. It crosses from Germany into Czechia - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Schneeberg is a mining town high in the Erzgebirge, the Ore Mountains, which divide Saxony from Bohemia, and its history is written in silver, cobalt and uranium. A silver rush in the late fifteenth century made the town rich, and the church of St. Wolfgang, a huge Gothic hall church with a Cranach altarpiece, was the proud result. Later the miners found cobalt, which was used to colour glass and porcelain a deep blue, and Saxony became the world's main supplier of that pigment. In the twentieth century came the Wismut company, a Soviet-German enterprise that mined uranium on a massive scale in the nearby valleys, leaving scars and also the radon spa at Bad Schlema. UNESCO listed the Erzgebirge mining region, including Schneeberg, in 2019.
Read the complete Schneeberg Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Schneeberg Mining Landscape is where the day begins. Next is Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works.
Down in the valley of the Flöha, on the edge of Olbernhau, stands an industrial village that looks almost too neat to be real: slate-roofed workshops, a hammer mill, workers' houses and a stout gatehouse, all enclosed within a wall. This is the Saigerhütte Grünthal, a works that separated silver from copper ore by a technique called liquation, and it is one of the best preserved sites of its kind in Europe. It forms part of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region, listed by UNESCO in 2019 for both the German and Czech sides of the range.
Read the complete Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works comes up about 66 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 140 km into the recorded legs you reach The Red Tower of Death. Next is back through Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works, late in the day. Next is Schneeberg Mining Landscape.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Schneeberg Mining Landscape write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Schneeberg Mining Landscape. That is the ride.
Schneeberg Mining Landscape → Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works → The Red Tower of Death is 74 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Red Tower of Death → back through Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works is 75 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Grünthal Silver-Copper Liquation Works → Schneeberg Mining Landscape is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.