Saddling up for river valley trip

A 300km cycle might not be everybody’s idea of a fun holiday, but it allowed Richard Herriott to experience the best that the often overlooked eastern Germany has to offer.

THE Werra river valley in Thuringia, eastern Germany, is something of a backwater. Foreigners might recognise only one relatively large, well-known town in the area, Eisenach. Opel makes the Corsa there. Martin Luther and JS Bach lived in the city and the Social Democratic party was founded in the Wartburg Castle which overlooks it all. Because it’s tucked inside a range of mountains, Werra valley has lots of other even less well-known but charming places worth visiting. I went there for four days to cycle the Werra’s 293km, from its source to its end.

I began my trip in the town of Erfurt, a half-day’s train ride from Frankfurt. From there, it was a further five hours by local trains to the start point of the bike route, Neuhaus-am-Rennsteig, at 800m up in the Thuringian Forest. The train travel itself should be counted as part of the trip’s entertainment: I love sipping a coffee and alternating between reading the newspaper and trying to read the landscape outside.