B 498 & B 241- Germany

South of Norway, this is the northernmost thrilling road you will find in mainland Europe.

4y ago
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Welcome to the Harz, the highest elevation between London and the Ural. These mountains may be little more than very big hills in character, but that's enough to create an environment for great roadways for driving enthusiasts.

What I do present here is neither one road by name nor by character. But this is an area, which has been settled for a long time, so roads are constantly flowing through villages. Therefor I picted a route, that can be driven in one go and with as little mundane interruption as possible. The route starts a short drive northeast of the small town of Osterode and the nearby Water-reservoir. Once construction is finished there, the road along said lake is also quite nice to look at.

Anyway, we start heading further north and further up, towards the meeting-point with the Harzhochstraße (Harz High Road), going through tall pine-forest and sweeping triple-lane bends. Following the B498 heading towards Altenau, we encounter much more twisting bends on a more narrow road with very big pines right next to the road. This makes it also noticeable darker, which is where this area gets the na... wait, wrong forest. But, seriously, the Harz is very similar to the more famous Black Forest in a lot of ways.

Passing through the old mining-town of Altenau we reach the shores of the Okertalsperre (Oker-Dam, literally "Oker-Valley-Blockade") which actually has a small ship in it driving around for the tourists. Crossing the first Bridge, we depart from the B498 towards Clausthal, which we will only dip into a few minutes later to join onto the B241 heading to Goslar.

Getting closer to Goslar the road gets a real mountainous character, hanging directly at the mountainsided with gorgeous views across the whole valley and two very flowing hairpins suporting your way down along the edges. This is the grand final of this road and a driving experience for which, considering where we are, you normally have to drive much further south. Just north of the Harz are flatlands all the way to the Skaggerrak, which also explains the high tourist attraction of the area, especially from motorbikes.

So, as always, try to make sure to visit on a weekday and not during rush-hour to get the most out of the experience. Especially if you are from the formentioned flatlands, this might be the easiest Stunning Road to reach and you should make sure to give the B498 and B241 as well as some surrounding backroads a well earned part of your attention.

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