Germany: Grand Tour, Romantic Road and Castles

Twenty nights and around 3,700 miles through six countries, from the Ruhr dams to the Tatras and back by way of Bavaria. Riders bring their own bike on the ferry, or hire one.

The Mohne Dam comes early, the reservoir breached by 617 Squadron in May 1943 with bouncing bombs dropped from sixty feet, then Brilon in the Sauerland. The Harz Mountains follow with three nights in one hotel, which is the right call: the Harz is among the best motorcycling regions in Germany, the Kyffhauser curves are the local favourite, and the Harzer Bikeschmiede museum holds a motorcycle built around a thirty-eight litre Panzer engine, which is as absurd as it sounds.

Colditz comes next, with a guided tour of the castle that served as a high-security prisoner of war camp for officers who had already escaped from somewhere else, and from which a remarkable number escaped again.

Poland follows, with medieval cobbled towns and landscapes that change quickly, then the Slovakian border and the Tatra Mountains, the highest range in the Carpathians. Bavaria’s Romantic Road closes the route with its castles and cultural landscape before the return to Harwich. The price is quoted per rider. Six countries in three weeks sounds like a sprint, and this part of Europe is compact enough that it is not, with the three-night Harz stay in the middle to take the edge off the mileage. The historical stops are also unusually well chosen for a riding tour: the Mohne, Colditz and the Romantic Road are three quite different pieces of German history, and none of them is a detour from good roads.