Kids love bike-riding and the area immediately surrounding Schloss Leizen could not be better suited to cycling. Germany is famous for it’s segregated bike paths, allowing cyclists of all ages and abilities to travel to work or cycle for leisure along car-free routes that are sometimes more direct than roads themselves.
But more than that there are quite literally hundreds of kilometres of designated rural tourist bike paths and routes through forest, fields, woodland and farmers tracks plus for the older accomplished cyclists quiet lanes and byways in our immediate area. A total of 7 official tourist bike routes pass very close to Schloss Leizen including the famous Berlin-Copenhagen bike path. Take a look a the end of this post for links to all of them.
Cycling can feel surprisingly easily in this area, the fresh air and beautiful scenery makes the whole experience exhilarating and there are no hills! OK, we’re not as flat as Holland and there are occasional inclines, but nothing that could be called a hill.
We’ve generated and tested a number of routes for our young guests, from a short 4km return trip to the local swimming lake for a picnic lunch, to a more challenging woodland route to the local town of Röbel and back 15km in each direction. Take a look at the route movie at the bottom of this post. We also combine other activities with cycling, such as nature and history discovery, which in turn tie-in with our learning program. Sometimes we cycle to our annex in the nearby village of Stuer where we have our kitchen-garden and archery terrain.
Even though more than 90% of our cycling activities are away from the roads we still take safety very seriously. We never leave Schloss Leizen in groups larger than 15 children, this number is decided upon cycling ability, the less able, means smaller groups. Each route is determined by age and ability and each group is supervised by at least two carers, a leader and “sweeper” at the rear, both of whom remain in contact with each other with “walkie-talkies” and carry mobile phones and GPS devices.
As part of our learning program we encourage children to create routes using modern technology and the GPS units, follow and track their ride, then analyse the ride and create photo-maps upon their return, the older children can also check their athletic performance.
Like all the equipment we have chosen for Germany For Kids we went through a long research process to choose the best and most suitable German-made bikes for our purposes, eventually deciding upon Velo de Ville, having checked all major brands at Eurobike, the world’s largest bike show.
We have a stable of 30 new bikes, in a broad selection of sizes so that no child will have to struggle with a bike that does not fit them, this includes, of course adult bikes for our teachers!
The best thing about this area is that even though it is one of the most popular cyclo-tourism destinations in Germany, the paths are usually very quiet, just because there are so many of them.
Take a look at these official routes:
- Eiszeiteroute (Ice Age Route)
- Elbe-Muritz Rundweg
- Eldetal Rundweg
- Mecklenbugische Seen Rundweg (Mecklenburg lake route)
- Berlin – Copenhagen bike path
- Muritz Rundweg (Around the Muritz lake and National Park)
- Rund um den Plauer See (around the Plauer lake)
