On 13 May 2019, BIKE editor Stefan Loibl set off on the Deutschland-Trail. The mission: an interactive MTB tour through Germany with as many single trails as possible. But how do you plan such a multi-day bike tour from west to east? First of all, we looked at an overview map of the German low mountain ranges in order to avoid boring bridging stages as far as possible. The only fixed points were the starting point at the border triangle near Aachen, the stop at the BIKE Festival in Willingen and the destination of the tour, namely via the Großer Arber in the Bavarian Forest to Bodenmais. If you roughly click together these fixed points and low mountain ranges, the programme spits out a 1200-kilometre route with a sawtooth profile and 18,000 metres of altitude. The planned tour leads through a total of eleven German low mountain ranges.
The hotspots of the Germany Trail route at a glance
- Eifel: From the start, the route leads directly through the North Eifel Nature Park, past the Rur reservoir.
- Siebengebirge The small Siebengebirge mountains are the next stop after crossing the Rhine near Bonn.
- Willingen: Through the Rothaargebirge, then a stop at the BIKE Festival in Willingen, from there to Winterberg. The route continues over the Rothaargebirge and then touches the foothills of the Westerwald.
- Dünsberg: Between Gießen and Wetzlar, we head for the Dünsberg, known for its MTB marathon.
- Taunus: From north to south through the Taunus. Highlight: the Großer Feldberg and the flow trail down.
- Bad Orb: The spa town in the Hessian Spessart has a fine network of single trails and tours to offer.
- Würzburg: The forests and vineyards around Würzburg are criss-crossed by a dense network of trails.
- Frankenjura: Via Bamberg and Bayreuth, the route goes up and down through Upper Franconia.
- Fichtelgebirge: Fine forest trails lead further east over the Ochsenkopf.
- Upper Palatinate Forest: We cycle south-east along the German-Czech border via Waldsassen, Waidhaus and Furth im Wald.
- The goal: After a detour to the Trans Bayerwald, the route climbs up to the Großer Arber - the highest peak in the Bavarian Forest - and down to the finish in Bodenmais.
After the rough planning, it's time for the details
After the big picture, we broke the route down into daily rideable chunks and started to plan the individual day tours in detail. Komoot works like this: select the starting point, enter the destination and select "mountain biking" as the activity. You can then add or move so-called "highlights" to the automatically generated route in the route planner. Highlights can be trails, viewpoints or places to stop for refreshments. Thanks to comments and photos from other Komoot users, you can quickly see which highlights might be worthwhile.
In addition to individual tips for regional highlights, we have also received complete GPS tracks for individual sections from some bikers. These are constantly added to the route. Modifying a route planned by other users is easy: Simply select the "Re-plan tour" function and you can adapt the route to your own preferences or select a different start/finish point.
BIKE Germany Trail #1: from the border triangle near Aachen to Bad Orb
This was the route of the first part of the Deutschland Trail (Dreiländereck - Bad Orb/11 stages), which started on 13 May:
BIKE Germany Trail #2: from Bad Orb to Bodenmais
More about the BIKE Germany Trail
You can find the latest updates, encounters and experiences from the road via these channels and the hashtag #GermanyTrail track:
- www.facebook.com/BIKE.Magazin
- www.instagram.com/bike.magazin
- Live tracking (from 13 May and 11 July)
