76km Lakes, lignite and Leipzig
Leipzig Tecnology Park
Ride Overview
I’m going to Leipzig, to the place where one can see the whole world in miniature’ (Gottold Ephraim Lessing)
Imagine riding on a Sunday afternoon along a bike path which is wide and smooth. Imagine families out to enjoy some fresh air and exercise in the spring sunshine. Pause and see them in your mind’s eye, ride on wide and smooth cycle paths, which are pot-hole free. Imagine them riding through woods, and beside great lakes and through a modern city with a long and proud past. Men, women and children riding on the same paths and lanes on expensive carbon machines, ‘Dutch bikes’, kids bikes, indeed anything with two wheels, both fancy and rusty. In this utopia, no one is swearing, there is no passive-aggressive bellringing, no shouting. This dream, is a Sunday in Leipzig.
Ride Notes
Until the 1990 Leipzig was one of the most polluted cities in Europe. It was surrounded by huge open cast mines, its industry belched out tons of filth into the sky. Under the forty-one year rule of the GDR, the city had become blighted and unemployment was rife.
Thirty years later, nature and mankind have healed the wounds. The city has become ‘most desirable city in Germany’ and ranked first among all large cities German cities for its urban aesthetics and gastronomy. The huge open cast lignite pits are now water-filled with spangled light, the shores lined with bathers. Yachts sail across the water. The still young woods are vareity rich and flower filled, leaves swell with spring. Bison graze in the water meadows.
Augustusplatz, Leipzig
We began the ride in Augustusplatz, a huge square encompassed by the striking modernist University, (one of Europe’s oldest), the Opera House and the Gewanderhaus, the home of one of the world’s foremost and oldest orchestras. We rode past cafés filled with people having late breakfasts, and out of the city on smooth and wide bike paths. We rode across grand and gracious city parks and beside rivers, through woods filled with wild garlic. And these were just the suburbs. Soon, we were out into the lakeland, the once blighted land of open-cast lignite mines. People rode with smiles on their faces, paddled, dozed in the sunshine and walked with their dogs. It was the perfect image of a city relaxing.
Clara-Zetkin Park, Leipzig
As we encircled Markkleeberger See, the skeletal iron work of the conveyor belts and cranes loomed like monster dinosaurs against the sky. In need of a pause as well as some awe, we stopped up at The Mining Technology Park and ogled at machines so large that they stretched our imagination beyond credulity.
Bergau Technik Park, Leipzig
Lured by the ease of cycling on pot-hole free bike paths over flat land, through woods and around old spoil heaps which today resemble grass covered, rolling downlands, we rode happily and easily around three lakes.
Over a light lunch at the Cafe Im Pfarrhaus, we plotted our route back into the city. We decided to continue with the post-industrial dreamscape and rode into Plagwitz, now filled with loft-apartments in former factories. Deep in the district’s heartland was the Leipzig Baumwollspinnerei, once the largest cotton mill in Europe now a centre for eclectic art and cafés. The whole district buzzed, laughter bounced off walls, modern beats echoed down factory streets.
Neues Rathaus Stadt Leipzig
Returning back to the city, we passed the city’s classic sights, including the Bach Museum and the Thomaskirche, home to the world’s oldest boys’ choir, the Thomanerchor whose documented history dates from 1212. (The church was as noisy with people as it was in his day - Bach complained to the authorities that people talked all the way through his music).
Marktplatz, Leipzig
Modernity and the past sat happily and strikingly beside each other in the squares and streets as we wheeled our bikes through the pedestrianised centre of the city to the Kaffeehaus Riquet for cake and tea. As we re-fueled, we agreed that the 2019 European City of the Year was one of the most delightful cities that we’d ever ridden in. It was also as Johann Scholze, a Bach contemporary wrote, ‘mightily beauteous!’
Ride practicalities
START/FINISH: Augustusplatz, or pick up the route from anywhere in the centre of Leipzig DISTANCE 76km TOTAL ASCENT: 450m TERRAIN AND SURFACES: Beautifully maintained cycle paths, both tarred and hard packed. (Suitable for all types of bikes from TT super bikes to old rusty MTBs) Segregated lanes in the city - other than short stretches in Plagwitz. Watch out for tramlines! FOOD: Cafe in Pfarrhaus, Kaffeehaus Riquet PUBLIC TRANSPORT:Not applicable LINKS TO OTHER RIDES: Bach by Bike
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