You have to write it down, otherwise you'd almost miss it: The Höchsten is the highest point in the district of Sigmaringen that does not belong to the Swabian Alb. It is not an impressive mountain if you are coming from the north, only just the highest of many humps - but with a great view of Lake Constance and the Alps. A light blue steel sculpture stands on top, with a name plate and the number "833 metres" (the official topo map says 838 metres) as well as the indication that the water from here either seeps south towards the Rhine or north towards the Danube.
On sunny weekends, the rotten radio station on the hilltop seems to send out secret signals. Messages that only racing cyclists can perceive: the call to ride to this point at all costs, from all sides. Five roads meet up there, and cyclists sweat uphill on all of them. The hardest ascent comes from Lake Constance, where the plateau drops almost 400 metres. Groups chatter their way uphill, ambitious riders snort over their aero handlebars. After the light blue steel sculpture, most of them quickly turn round and hurtle back downhill.
The beauties of the Swabian Alb north of the Höchsten are much less well marked. One person who reliably finds them is Johann Sedlacek, mid-50s, wiry and chairman of the RSC Sigmaringen. The small town in the valley of the young Danube has turned him into a side road specialist: "You can totally forget about the Danube valley at the weekend," he says. "It's a motorbike race track." And all the federal, state and district roads? "Some of them are also brutal if you don't know your way around. Some of them are used by lorries." The Swabian Alb is fairly sparsely populated - and therefore too remote for motorway construction. So the traffic also hums along some of the minor roads. But only on some of them. The rest is cycling country. In the rich state of Baden-Württemberg, there are even tarmac roads that would at best be gravelled elsewhere.
You can download the entire article and the GPS data for these tours below:
- Tour 1: Surfing on the Alb (93 kilometres, 1,050 metres in altitude, max. 17 percent gradient)
- Tour 2: Between the Alb and apples (114 kilometres, 1,100 metres in altitude, max. 10 percent gradient
