Peace Ride Stage 3: Dresden to Chemnitz

The longest stage on paper and the easiest in the legs, right up until km 130. Rolling Saxon farmland and small towns for most of the day, with one piece of cycling history stuck in the middle of the last third.

How it rides

The opening 30 km climb 250 m out of the Elbe basin through the Tharandt forest, which is the only sustained climbing of the day and gets it out of the way early. After that the route settles into a long rolling traverse west across Saxony: Freiberg, Hainichen, Mittweida at roughly km 73, then north-west to Rochlitz and back down south-west through Penig and Waldenburg. None of it is flat and none of it is hard. The profile is a constant low-amplitude sawtooth, and the way to ride it is to stop looking at the gradient and settle into a rhythm.

Then Meerane. At about km 130 the road drops fast, crosses a dip, and tips straight into the Steile Wand: 248 m of cobbles averaging around 12 per cent, by the town’s own reckoning. The gradient is nowhere near even. It starts at 11 per cent, hits 19 per cent in the middle, eases, then goes again at 14 near the top. Measured off our trace, which starts where the climbing does rather than where the cobbles do, it is 33 m of gain over about 290 m, 1 minute 50 seconds, speed down to 6.6 km/h.

For fifty years it was the most famous climb of the old Peace Race. Pick your gear before the dip, because there is no time to change once you are on it, and the cobbles are not kind if you are out of the saddle and grinding.

After Meerane the route turns back east through Glauchau and runs a straightforward last 25 km into Chemnitz.

Worth stopping for

Freiberg. A silver town, mined since the twelfth century. The mining academy there, founded in 1765, is the oldest institution of its kind anywhere in the world. Alexander von Humboldt studied at it.

Mittweida. The natural halfway stop, at km 73. The technical college grounds sit right on the route.

Meerane. Obviously. The Steile Wand has a plaque and a certain amount of local pride attached to it, and the town is worth the stop even after you have ridden up it.

Chemnitz. The route finishes at the ice sports park north of the city centre.

Notes

We rode this one in rain from the start, easing around Meerane and clearing before Chemnitz. Wet cobbles on a 19 per cent ramp are worth respecting, and the long rolling middle section is exposed enough that a headwind changes the day completely.

If you only ride one piece of this route, ride the approach to Meerane and the wall.

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