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Northern Brandenburg Biking Tour Around Gransee
As part of our mission to explore more of our country and involve some triathlon training in that exploration, we decided to visit Gransee. Gransee is an area of Brandenburg full of beautiful, secluded lakes, forests, and long stretches of empty country roads. These roads are perfect for biking and getting in some long distance rides.
If you are thinking of visiting Brandenburg for the same reason, read on for our tips on what to bring and what to avoid in this relatively unexplored area of Germany.
Where To Stay
We stayed just outside of Gransee town, close to the train station. In hindsight, this wasn’t a great choice. At the time of our visit, Germany had just come out of a springtime Covid lockdown, and not much was open. If you are planning on staying in a place with a kitchen you should be absolutely fine shopping at the local Netto and cooking for yourself. If you are able to get a camping spot, even better.
We stayed at the Seehotel Louise. It was a beautiful, sparkling clean, new hotel. They allowed us to keep our bikes in their basement. The breakfast spread was also impressive, although the service staff seemed overworked and irritable. It would have been perfect if they had also served dinner, as there were no restaurants within walking distance. Maybe outside of Coronazeit they do!
Where To Eat
As mentioned above, if you stay in Gransee, don’t expect to find too many restaurants. If you have your own place with a kitchen, there is a large Netto where you can fulfill all of your basic needs. If you plan on eating out, check the opening hours and in some cases, make a reservation.
We ate at Bamboo Asiatisches Restaurant and had some excellent duck and chicken. This restaurant is highly recommended by us if you are craving Asian food. They also seemed to have longer hours than the neighboring restaurants.
One of the best restaurants in the area is Mühle Tornow. It is so good that you should probably make a reservation to eat here! We tried to make reservations while cycling through one day and they were completely full for lunch and dinner for the entire weekend. During the week it shouldn’t be as busy.
If you are only using your bike to get around, we recommend that you bring your own snacks and water bottles. Restaurants may not always be open, and if you are biking on a Sunday you won’t be able to get snacks easily in a supermarket. We never had a problem filling our water bottles at the restaurants, but we never saw a public fountain anywhere, either. Remember that tap water is safe to drink in Germany, but don’t drink the water from the lakes unless you have a filter.
What To Do
In the spring, summer, and fall, there is plenty to do outside. The Gransee area is full of natural lakes, forests, hiking and biking trails, and long, country roads. If you aren’t planning on biking everywhere like we did, we would suggest you drive. The distances between towns can be quite long, and public transport doesn’t run as often as it does in the big cities.
Bring your bike! We planned on biking everywhere we went and put in around 50 miles (80 kilometers) per day. Obviously, don’t do this unless you are in shape and ok with sitting on your bike for many hours! We biked from Gransee to Lychen, down by the Großer Wentowsee, around Fürstenberg/Havel, and from Zehdenick up through the Havel to Marienthal.
The kind of bike you bring may or may not be important, depending on what you want to do. If you are happy going on back trails in the forest and along the lakes, a mountain bike or a gravel bike with thicker tires might be a better choice. If you are planning on putting in a lot of miles, a road bike would be better. We brought our road bikes (Giant Propel) and only had trouble in a few places when Google Maps led us astray. It was amazing how many gravelly, sandy trails showed up as actual roads on Google!
Suggestions On What To Pack While Biking
Not sure what to bring on a longer bike trip? Here are some ideas below:
- Water bottles (bring several)
- Tire repair kit
- Spare tire(s)
- Bike kit (biking shorts/pants, breathable top, layers for cooler weather, gloves, helmet)
- Sunglasses
- Snacks
- Extra cash
- ID and health insurance card
Getting Around
We highly recommend using the Kamoot app to plan your bike routes. Google Maps led us astray many times. We ended up in the middle of the forest on barely used dirt paths many times and had to backtrack as our tires couldn’t handle the terrain. Kamoot does a much better job at creating routes based on previously biked routes, and will tell you what sort of terrain you might encounter. We did come across a few locals who were more than happy to help us out with finding the right road to get to our destination. Outside of the big cities, people tend to be a lot friendlier!
German roads are a wonderful place for cyclists. Germans must take rigorous driving exams and are quite alert to cyclists. We have never felt unsafe out in the countryside. It also helps that there are plenty of clearly marked bike paths to follow.
How To Get There
You can make Gransee a day trip from Berlin . The RE5 goes directly from Berlin to Gransee and takes about 45 minutes. Be warned that if you take your bike, it goes in special bike sections of the train. In our case, there was a bike section in every car of the train, however, these sections were stuffed full of bikes for the weekend. Some people didn’t make it on the train because they couldn’t find a space for their bike! If you want to avoid this problem, go early, before 8:30am.
Further Exploration
Before heading anywhere, it’s a good idea to map out where you want to go, but be ok with changing plans if needed. We had to change our route due to the terrain a few times, but since we knew our destination it was only a slight “bump” in the road for us!
On our list of more bike routes to explore in Germany are the Mauerweg, the Berlin-Copenhagen cycle route, and the Elbe cycle route. We will let you know when we head out on these famous German cycle routes!
Have you been cycling in Germany? Let us know your experiences below, and please share any other great cycle routes we may not have mentioned!