Rotterdam to Berlin - Recommendations Please

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LincsGSer

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Planning a 10 day trip to Berlin next spring. Any tips on ferry discounts, best roads to ride, accommodation or places to visit all welcome. Thinking of taking 3 days travelling there, a few days in Berlin and another 3 day wander back.
 
Not far from Berlin is Colditz Castle. It's now a youth hostel. We spent the night and parked the bikes in the old courtyard. The museum tour is a must.


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You won't need a ferry (other than perhaps across the Rhine or some obscure German river) between Rotterdam and Berlin. They are cheap, no discount required. Trust me.

Great roads to ride, mate? Leave Rotterdam, head due east, arrive Berlin. Seriously, have you tried looking at anything at all vis-a-vis a map? Have you tried looking at the sticky which some kind hearted bod created with guides to Germany?

http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php/416452-Germany-calling

Come on, you've decided to go to Berlin for some reason or another in the spring of 2018, you can make a bit more of an effort, surely? But hey, let's not be too harsh, here's some ideas to get you going:

1. You want to do the journey out to Berlin and the return back in three days each way. You could choose any route you like, then divide the distance into three equal thirds, then find yourself two overnight hotel stops at or near the point where the two one third distance lines end. Alternatively, you could ride out say 50% of the distance, stop for two nights and use the second day to ride out on a circular route back to your hotel. From the links below, you can see that Goslar might well make a good two night stop. Then find yourself ride out routes involving Goslar. I Googled two words: 'Motorcyle Goslar' which brought up:

https://www.goslar.de/presse/presse...service/603-stadtforst-weiter-auf-erfolgskurs

Which brought me to:

https://www.goslar.de/contact-servi...ng-to-goslar-special-routes-for-motorcyclists

You'll need your map to work out quite where they recommend riding but it wouldn't be too hard to do.

And for simple hotel (biker friendly, so they say) to:

https://www.goslar.de/hotels-apartments

2. I then added a third word to my Google search involving Goslar, 'motorcycle routes Goslar'. This turned up lots of ideas.

3. Thinking outside the box a bit, I tried three other words in Google (fairly sure I wouldn't be the first bod to go from Holland's major port to the capital of Germany) 'Rotterdam to Berlin' just to see what popped up or if there were ideas I could steal. Bingo! You could turn this coach trip around a bit, perhaps. Reading between - or even along - the lines you'll be able to work out what the tour involves, the places they'll go (if not the specific roads taken) the towns they'll visit, some hotel ideas (see also Booking.com, Trivago, TripAdvisor etc) all enough to get you going.

http://andersonscoaches.co.uk/berlin-the-harz-mountains/5312691

Or this:

http://www.mancass.com/index.php/tours/110-berlin-the-hartz-mountains

Or:

http://www.glentonholidays.com/itineraries/9021-harz-mountains-and-berlin

To get you in the mood, here's Leonard to get you going with its Euro-bop inserts:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ytwte4-9Gec" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Come on YOU can do it. Give it a go. You found your way to UKGSer, so play about on the web. It's free, you can't break it and you know yourself better than any of us. You've got perhaps seven months until spring 2018, so there's lots of time. Start to put some ideas and good websites you find up in this thread. Who knows, it could well become the 'Go to' thread for the whole worldwide web; wouldn't that be great?

Richard

PS There are several threads about North Sea ferries, including discount codes. Failing turning any up, contact Micky when he's back from touring the Highlands and Islands.
 
Not far from Berlin is Colditz Castle. It's now a youth hostel. We spent the night and parked the bikes in the old courtyard. The museum tour is a must.

Which does nothing to answer the bod's question at all.
 
The obvious areas to visit enroute are the Sauerland (good biking roads and the famous Dambuster dams are well worth a visit) and Harz mountains :thumby:
 
Apart from the places to visit bit.

I read it as an appeal for roads, digs and stuff between Rotterdam and Berlin (three days) and Berlin back to Rotterdam (three days). He wants the six days in Berlin, too? Jesus, that's his entire holiday, but let's start:

Berlin zoo

Berlin walking tour

The Schöneberg district, is a must

Michelin Green guide / Lonely Planet / Rough Guide to.... all available from good bookshops, or Amazon if you don't want the walk. But, if you go online, don't wail to me when your High Street is nothing but charity shops.

Ten best things to do in Berlin.... all available from Google. More available on request

Hotels? Yeah, Berlin's got hotels. Lots in fact.


PS Berlin to Colditz direct via the motorway / main roads is about two and a half hours, five with the return back.
 
Did a similar trip last year, you arrive Rotterdam around 830 am. We blasted across holland to the German border using the motorway link. Heading east out of the port you will see not many decent roads, so ride 150 miles in, and plan an over night stop so you can reach Berlin fresh the next day. You could do it in one day but you would need to use nearly all motorways .
We stopped over and used the Harz mts for a base, this links colditz , Berlin etc within easy reach

We planned travelling from the port of Rotterdam on a Sunday, caught the Sat night boat. No lorries drive on the continent on Sunday so the roads are much quiter.

Enjoy
 
Did a similar trip last year, you arrive Rotterdam around 830 am. We blasted across holland to the German border using the motorway link. Heading east out of the port you will see not many decent roads, so ride 150 miles in, and plan an over night stop so you can reach Berlin fresh the next day. You could do it in one day but you would need to use nearly all motorways .
We stopped over and used the Harz mts for a base, this links colditz , Berlin etc within easy reach

Enjoy

He did indeed, see: http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php/424882-Harz-mountains
 
On the way out or back from Rotterdam take in the roads across the Afsluitdijk and the Houtribdijk.

We did a run around North Germany last year , went north from Ijmuiden over the Afsluitdijk along the North German coast to Laboe, then into the old East German area on towards Ruegen, then Peenemunde , down through the national park area and lakes around Neubrandenburg/Fuerstenberg Havel to Berlin.

We then came back via Wolfsburg and Celle before going back to ijmuiden via the Houtribdijk.

We found some excellent roads in Lower Saxony, Saxony - Anhalt and Mecklenburg Vorpommern that ran parallel to the Autobahn routes but through some impressive countryside
 
Neil W's suggestion would work. Here's a version of it:

Day: 1 Zoom from Rotterdam to Lubeck

Day 2. Meander Lubeck to Stralsund, the Baltic coast. Few bods from the UK go there, as it's not got mountains, so it's bound to be shite, mate. They are right, it ain't got mountains but as to the rest? Go and make your own mind up.

Day 3. Meander Stralsund to Berlin

Return via Goslar etc etc etc
 
Any use to you, so far, LincsGSer?

I thought I had found a Berlin resident in the pub to assist you. But it turns out he lives somewhere near the Black Forest, which is about as much use as asking an Eskimo directions for downtown San Diego.

Oh well, never mind. Early days yet.
 
Good ideas. Thank you. More information about hotels that people recommend always welcome. Interested in the Colditz -Dam Busters - WW2 themes and twisty routes through the mountains particularly.
Thanks too for all the links.
 
The word mountains (in the sense of Alpine peaks) does not really apply to the Harz.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/germany/harz-mountains/introduction

GetFile.aspx


1200px-Harz_map.png


The trouble with hotels is that:

1. Bod A says, the hotel in town xyz is great, which might well be true. Bod B says, the hotel in town abc is great, which might well be true, too. Neither are any good if you pass them at noon (unless you want to stop for the day) or if they are several miles or more away from where your route takes you.

2. Bods have widely different expectations. Some demand full English from the kitchen each morning and the ability to converse with everyone and anyone in English, morning noon and night. Others will not care if the waitress only speaks Japanese with a stutter, providing she has huge breasts. Others will only want to share, others can only sleep securely if their baby is outside their window. Some will see EUR 50 a night as a complete rip-off, some will want the hotel to be miles from any town, some will want it slap bang in the middle of every nightclub possible....

I'd worry less about hotels and apply yourself to some more reasearch and your maps. Lodging will sort itself out, trust me.
 
If you fancy taking the Baltic coast route to Berlin, this one works well, courtesy of Louis.de

They designed it as a five day 'holiday jaunt' type route, out from Berlin to Hamburg, though it works just as well in reverse. You know, "Me and my six mates have got five days away from SWMBO to get to Hamburg from Berlin, tell us great roads, things to see, places to stop" type of thing *

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I used it when making a lap of Germany last year, recreating it in BaseCamp and then loading it into my GPS device. I started in Lubeck, not having sufficient time for doing the loop up from Hamburg past Kiel. I did though spend an additional day riding around Rugen island, a short hop across from Stralsund (2) on the map.

One tip: Zoom the map right in. As you'll see it does not show the actual roads. Don't worry, when you have a decent map you can work out which minor roads the redline must follow. I couldn't find them all on my Michelin maps but tracked them all down on my ADAC maps.

Second tip: I found it very useful to highlight the route on the ADAC map and take it with me

Tip three: As Louis.de designed it to go up to the coast from Berlin, the route to Stralsund from the capital is fairly direct, though it still takes a day or near enough. Depending on your time available, you could very easily come westwards a bit closer to the lakes. That though will depend on you and how you decide to break up the three days you intend to take in either direction between Berlin and the coast of Holland. You could of course make it four days each way and reduce your time in Berlin from six days down to four.... but hey, it's your holiday, you decide what's best for you.





* Though they say it in German, obviously
 
I would add Bremen to that route as it's a pleasant town to visit and the musicians do need an audience!

A note about the afsluitdijk route through the northern Dutch provinces. Unless you particularly want to see how they built the dijk or want to visit Groningen or Assen then I would warn that the dutch roads tend to be very straight. There's plenty of nice towns and villages to visit but not much entertainment in between. Unlike Germany, you can't rely on B roads to get from place to place very easily.

2.5 hours of Dutch motorway will get you from Rotterdam to Groningen then you can head for Leer in Germany and onwards to Bremen.

If you are heading for the Hartz then head due east and aim for Osnabrueck and/or Hameln as this then opens up the Saurland or the Hartz for you.
 
I'm just back from a 10 day trip along the Baltic Coast, Berlin, Dresden and Hartz, looked a bit like this image below, can help with routes if you have a garmin pm me your email

Capture.JPG
 
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