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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 586 km one-way ride from near Würzburg, about 9 h 46 of riding. It goes by way of Tauberbischofsheim, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Dinkelsbuhl and Nordlingen. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,350 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
56 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it — speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through.
For about 39 km this is Romantische Strasse, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Würzburg lies on the Main in Lower Franconia, in the middle of a landscape of vineyards, and it is the northern start of the Romantic Road, the touring route that runs through Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg to Füssen in the Alps. The city has around a hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, a university that dates back to the fifteenth century and a great Baroque palace, the Residenz, built in the eighteenth century for the prince-bishops by the architect Balthasar Neumann. Its staircase has a ceiling fresco by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, said to be the largest in the world, and the whole building is a World Heritage site.
Read the complete Wurzburg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wurzburg is where the day begins. Next is Tauberbischofsheim.
Tauberbischofsheim has produced more Olympic fencers than most countries. The town in the Tauber valley is Germany's fencing capital, with a club and training centre that has trained generations of champions, among them Thomas Bach, who won gold in the team foil at the 1976 Olympics and later became president of the International Olympic Committee. In a quiet place, the occasional clink of blades from a training hall is a surprise.
Read the complete Tauberbischofsheim write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tauberbischofsheim comes up about 56 km into the recorded legs. Next is Rothenburg ob der Tauber.
Rothenburg ob der Tauber looks like a film set because, for a long time, it had no choice. The medieval town stands on a ridge above the Tauber valley in Franconia, enclosed by an almost complete ring of walls with towers and gates, and its timber houses, steep roofs and cobbled lanes have survived because the town lost its wealth after the Thirty Years War and could not afford to rebuild. It was too poor to modernise, and so it stayed old. Today it draws visitors in large numbers, and the main streets can be packed with tour groups by mid-morning.
Read the complete Rothenburg ob der Tauber write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 148 km into the recorded legs you reach Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Next is Dinkelsbuhl.
Dinkelsbühl is the one that makes people stop talking mid-sentence when they ride through the gate. A complete medieval wall rings the old town, with towers, a moat of lawns and a maze of lanes of gabled houses painted in butter and rose, and the whole thing came through the Second World War largely untouched. It lies on the Wörnitz in western Bavaria, a town of about twelve thousand people on the Romantic Road, which makes it a natural place to start or end a day on that famous route.
Read the complete Dinkelsbuhl write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dinkelsbuhl, about halfway. Next is Nordlingen.
Nördlingen sits in the middle of a hole in the ground, and the hole was made from space. About fourteen and a half million years ago, a meteorite crashed into this part of southern Germany and left a crater about twenty-five kilometres wide, the Ries, now a gently bowl-shaped plain of fields, villages and low hills. Nördlingen was built inside it, in a perfect circle, and the medieval wall that surrounds it is almost round, the only fully preserved ring wall in Germany that you can walk along the top of. The walk takes about an hour.
Read the complete Nordlingen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Nordlingen sits at 335 km, about halfway. Next is Augsburg.
Augsburg is older than almost everything else on the Romantic Road, and it knows it. The Romans founded a camp here in 15 BC and named it after Emperor Augustus, and for much of the Middle Ages it was one of the richest cities in Europe, thanks to the Fugger and Welser banking families, who lent money to emperors and popes. The Fuggerei, a walled quarter of small yellow houses built by Jakob Fugger in 1521, is the world's oldest social housing complex still in use, and the annual rent is famously less than a euro.
Read the complete Augsburg write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Augsburg comes up about 395 km into the recorded legs. Next is Wieskirche.
The Wieskirche stands alone in a meadow in the Pfaffenwinkel, the priests' corner of Upper Bavaria, with the Ammergau Alps behind it, and it is the finest rococo church in Germany. From the outside it is almost plain: a long, white building with a modest tower and a red roof, set among fields with a few farmhouses nearby. The surprise is on the inside, where the whole space explodes into light, colour and movement, with a ceiling painted as an open sky, stucco curling like clouds and a pulpit and altars glittering with gold.
Read the complete Wieskirche write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 548 km into the recorded legs you reach Wieskirche. Next is Fussen.
Füssen is the southern end of the Romantic Road, a sunny little town on the Lech river, a stone's throw from the Austrian border and with the Alps standing straight above its rooftops. It has about fourteen thousand people and a history stretching back to the Romans, who built a road here, the Via Claudia Augusta, to carry troops over the Alps. The old town is tidy, with arcaded streets and painted facades, and the river tumbles over a small waterfall at the edge of the centre.
Read the complete Füssen write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Fussen. That is the ride.
Wurzburg → Tauberbischofsheim is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tauberbischofsheim → Rothenburg ob der Tauber is 92 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Rothenburg ob der Tauber → Dinkelsbuhl is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dinkelsbuhl → Nordlingen is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Nordlingen → Augsburg is 122 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Augsburg → Wieskirche is 153 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Wieskirche → Fussen is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.