The area at least seems to steel winter sports enthusiasts. "But racing cyclists can also cover a lot of altitude within a few kilometres," says Ralf Messerschmidt, second chairman of the local cycling club, the Viba-Anschütz team. Incidentally, many of Messerschmidt's team colleagues also switch to cross-country skis in winter; Messerschmidt himself, a carpenter by trade, prefers horn sledges. His tip for racing cyclists: a tour across the famous Rennsteig hiking trail, which follows the ridge of the Thuringian Forest. In concrete terms, it looks like this: up the ridge, looking right and left for the white "R" for Rennsteig, then steeply down into the valley - and straight back up again.
The 170-kilometre Rennsteig trail is legendary and a tourist attraction. In the Middle Ages, it marked the border between the Duchy of Franconia and the Landgraviate of Thuringia. For a long time, the ridgeway was a trade route. Today, it is still the most popular long-distance hiking trail in Germany. Kilometres
You can find the complete travel report with these tours as a PDF download below:
- Tour 1: Heroes of winter sports (127 kilometres, 1,600 metres in altitude, max. 8 % gradient)
- Tour 2: Up the Inselberg (101 kilometres, 1,900 metres in altitude, max. 13 % gradient)
