Looking out of the window, the mood has been stuck in a traffic jam for days. Gloomy colours have made themselves at home where the sky would normally be. Haematoma blue. Rubbish bag grey. Jeans jacket blue. Just now, thick, drooling motorway grey is rolling over the city again. In tow is a miserable mix of lapis lazuli and blue curacao.
Filled with hatred, I look out of the window for what feels like the hundredth time. The people on the street take cover under umbrellas that look like satellite dishes. People's socks are wet and they're making pouty faces. Not the weather for someone like me, who holds the shower hose with the cold water briefly against the wall tiles in the sauna and passes it off as toughening up. I lie back in my hotel bed and stare pro forma at the tiny television. I've arrived at the end of the world, in mountain bike hell. In Hamburg, the city of millions whose weather statistics sound like a travel warning: humid climate all year round! 52 days of fog a year! 195 days of rain!
I should have known. Hamburg is not for active holidaymakers. But the supposedly gloomy prospects led me here. More than 15,000 BIKE readers told us their travel intentions in our annual survey - and not a single one of them declared Hamburg or Schleswig-Holstein to be their dream destination. Only Berlin and the Saarland came off so badly. That awakened my thirst for adventure. Can there be a mountain bike region that is as bad as its reputation? That offers so little to look forward to that you can't even be arsed to make a short visit? Or in the case of Hamburg: Why is the image of the Hanseatic city so bad, even though it has been a centre of the racing scene and home to renowned bike manufacturers since time immemorial? How can this be - despite Stevens, Bergamont, Pirate and Niels-Peter Jensen? Part of the answer can be read from any folding map. The best trails in Hamburg are not in Hamburg at all, but in Lower Saxony. In the fabulous Harburg mountains, directly on the other side of the Elbe.
The sky is dry for the first time in days. And in a relatively friendly reinforced concrete grey. The colour of hope? Google knows better. Hope is black. As black as the night. Today is Nightride day in the Harburg mountains.
MTB tour in the Harburg mountains
It's a three-hour drive from here to the Harz Mountains, but the Harburg mountains are reminiscent of the highest mountain range in northern Germany. The ground is grippy. The paths change direction erratically. Roots and stones play well with the suspension. The climbs are short, but numerous. They don't require any special equipment, but all the more what sports scientists call strength endurance. Hamburg, city of a thousand facets. Love. Freedom. Everything.
The drivers:
Lock tour in the north of Hamburg
Circular course with start/finish at Poppenbüttler Schleuse. Distinctive points/route sections: Mellingburger Schleuse - Quellental - Waldspielplatz - Duvenstedter Brook - Kupferteich - Wuksfelder Schleuse - Wohldorfer Wald
The tour starts at the Marienhof car park at Poppenbüttler Schleuse (take the S 1 to Poppenbüttel station, via Saseler Damm, Marienstraße). The tour leads along the Alster and over small inclines to Mellingburger Schleuse. The Kupferteich pond is worth a picnic with a footbath. The route continues via the Duvenstedter Brook, a nature reserve covering around 1000 hectares, and the Wohldorfer Wald forest back to the starting point. The tour can be varied as desired via many path branches. Refreshment tip: "Der Wanderer", Ohlstedter railway station.
Everything about the MTB-Revier-Check Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein can be found below as a PDF download.
