Iron Curtain Route ?

[Tandem Tom]

Has anyone cycled the Iron Curtain Route in Germany?

[mattheus]

https://www.google.com/search?q=Iron+Cu ... e&ie=UTF-8

Quite a few dicussions already

[mxg01]

A bloke cycled the whole Iron Curtain Route and wrote a book about it, The Cyclist Who Went Out In The Cold. It's a fairly interesting read.

[Galactic]

I haven't cycled this, but I've spoken to some who have (NB more than 15 years ago, things may have changed a little) and I've often looked at it on the map.

Going along the Baltic Coast is reasonably nice (the Danish side is massively nicer, but then it's not the Iron Curtain Trail), prevailing wind from the west, difficult to find accommodation, sometimes even a pitch in a campsite, during the summer.

Fairly nice in the northern section, nothing too demanding until you get near the Harz mountain range, where there are quite a few steep bits and the route taken can be very rough underwheel (check maps, the route may have changed - according to the CyclOSM maps the road conditions aren't too bad).

It gets a bit easier after that for a short while, then come the Thuringian mountains, and you're back to up-and-down and rough tracks. The border between Thuringia and Bavaria is very demanding contour-wise (continuously dropping down in steep valleys and back up the other side), and it doesn't get much easier along the Bavarian-Czech border.

It's a good route, in terms of passing through interesting and varied terrain, and there's a few Iron Curtain related museums that are worth stopping by if that's your thing. But you definitely need good hill-legs for the stretch over the Harz mountains and in Thuringia/Bavaria.

[wheelyhappy99]

A bloke cycled the whole Iron Curtain Route and wrote a book about it, The Cyclist Who Went Out In The Cold. It's a fairly interesting read.

Entertaining book I thought, and includes some interesting, less well known, history of some places along the route.