Free Motorcycle Touring Routes – ST2288 and ST2290 Germany

It was only after I’d ridden it and thought – damn, that was a good road, I must remember the number – that I discovered the ST2288 was a well-known biking route in Germany.

Germany is a big place, approximately 138,000 square miles (357,000 square kilometres), so the chances of stumbling on a famous biking road would seem low, but then again, Germany is covered in them thanks to the Autobahn system.

The need to cover large distances quickly and efficiently keeps the heavy traffic off the back roads, so the road surfaces are generally good and pothole-free. You will encounter villages with reduced speed limits, but villages bring cafes and bakeries to break up the days spent exploring.

Combined with the ST2290, the route is 40 miles long, starting northeast of Frankfurt and passing along the eastern edge of the Black Mountains Nature Reserve.

It may seem like a long way to go just to ride an arbitrary road, but Germany’s Hessen and Bavaria regions are littered with good biking roads. It would be easy to spend a week enjoying yourself and never ride the same road twice.

While others are sitting on a boat for two days travelling to the Picos (Spain), you could be riding through the Black Forest and becoming familiar with the ritual of  “Kaffee und Kuchen” (calorific cakes consumed with rocket fuel coffee).