Peace Ride Stage 2: Liberec to Dresden

The hardest of the three by a wide margin, and the one that will catch you out if you only read the profile summary. The event briefing said the climbing waits until the last third, after the Elbe. That is true of most of it. It is not true of the first nine kilometres.

How it rides

Warm up before you start. The road climbs out of Liberec immediately: 9.2 km, 392 m of ascent, 4.3 per cent average, up the flank of the Ještěd ridge. The top, at 767 m near Kryštofovo Údolí, is the highest point of all three days, and you reach it before you have properly settled into the day. Riding it cold in the morning is unpleasant. Give yourself a few kilometres of something flat first if you can.

After that you get paid back. The descent spills into the Ploučnice valley and the next 35 km are the fastest of the whole route, a gentle downhill run through Stráž pod Ralskem and Česká Lípa where holding 35 km/h takes very little. The valley continues to Děčín, where the Elbe sits at 126 m, the low point of the three days.

Everything after the river goes up. The second big climb starts at the water and does not stop for 15 km, gaining 443 m to 581 m at Sněžník, and crosses back into Germany somewhere in the middle without anything marking it.

Then the Ore Mountains give you a staircase: four separate climbs between km 112 and km 138, none long, all steep enough to hurt at that point in the day. The sharpest are a 131 m ramp at 4.9 per cent and a 107 m ramp at 6.1 per cent, the second of which had us at 10 km/h. The high point of this section is around 550 m above Börnchen.

The last 30 km are the reward: 400 m of descent off the mountains into the Elbe basin and Dresden.

Worth stopping for

Stráž pod Ralskem. Looks like an ordinary quiet Czech town from the saddle. It was the centre of Czechoslovakia’s uranium industry for decades, worked by pumping acid into the ground to dissolve the ore. The groundwater clean-up started in 1996 and is still running.

Děčín. On the Elbe, the low point, and the last easy place to eat before the climbing starts in earnest. Do not skip it.

Glashütte. A small town in a fold of the Ore Mountains and the home of German watchmaking. Ferdinand Adolph Lange arrived in 1845 with a government loan and taught fifteen farmers and straw weavers to make watch parts. The German Watch Museum is on the square.

Dresden. The route comes in through the Großer Garten, past the baroque palace and across the park railway. Carry on to the Neumarkt and the Frauenkirche if you want somewhere to stop that feels like an arrival.

Notes

This is a long day with a hard profile and two border crossings. If you are riding it unsupported, the gap between Děčín and Glashütte is the stretch to plan food around, because it is all climbing and the villages are small.

Temperature on the day ran from 11 °C at the start in Liberec to 21 °C by mid-afternoon in the hills, which is worth knowing when you pack.

The ride report for this stage, with photos, is here.