There is much to be said for the Bavarian Alps. For starters, they’re smaller than the ones in Austria and Italy, so you can hop on them and drive around without even updating your will. And there are also lakes, because this is the German Lake District.
We are in the Tegernsee valley in the south-east of Bavaria – about an hour’s drive from Munich – close to the Austrian border for rowing, a combination of cycling and walking, preferably between pastry shops and beer cellars.
This part of Germany has been the playground of the super-rich for centuries – from Bavarian kings, Russian tsars to Nazi elites. Now it’s pop stars, soccer players and a few oligarchs.
Our base is the Karma Bavaria Hotel which is nothing fancy but ideally located.
The first morning the hotel bus takes us to Lake Tegernsee, where the low-hanging fog is broken by passing swans and color-coded rowing teams. In a few minutes we pass a piece of modern Russian history: first the portals of the late President Gorbachev’s summer dacha, and then the magnificent stately homes (for there are three of them) of a close comrade of President Putin.
Lake view: Mark Porter takes an e-bike tour through the Tegernsee valley in southeast Bavaria. On his journey he sees swans and color-coded oars in Tegernsee (above)
The next day we rent some electric bikes from a shop on the Schliersee shore near our hotel. The owner gives us a map on which he draws a route around the three lakes in the valley, together with GPS devices and heavy batteries “good for 100 km”.
“I hope it’s more than enough,” says my friend Amelie, an avid motorcyclist who hasn’t ridden a pedal bike in 20 years.
Then we head south along the sun-kissed coastline. At the southern end of the lake we see a man in a swimming trunk ready to take a dip. I would like to go with him – but only in the middle of summer.
We stop at the Josefsthal waterfall before heading uphill to Spitzingsee, a lake surrounded by mountains of pine trees. Then we drive almost effortlessly to the Austrian border, past squat half-timbered houses.
At the foot of the Schinderberg we sail north to Tegernsee. These wheels are a godsend. They allow you to zoom up steep hills when you put them in sport mode, and Amelie is instantly converted.
Mark spends a night in Rottach-Egern (above), a town put on the map by Bavarian King Maximilian I Josef in the early 1800s
We arrive in Rottach-Egern at the southern tip of the Tegernsee lake, where we see a nice hotel by the lake. Would they take people in sweaty lycra? You could not have been more welcoming.
Rottach-Egern appears to have been the epicenter of local wealth since it was put on the map by Bavarian King Maximilian I Joseph in the early 19th century.
Tsar Nicholas I of Russia came to stay, and later Hitler regularly visited the lakeside villa, now said to be the favorite home of Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-Russian oligarch.
We cycle the 15 miles around the lake before entering the forest and hills, hopefully towards Schliersee. In a row of houses, a woman feeds a tabby cat with a broken tail chocolate chip cookies. I ask if we are on the right track. “Yes,” she said, “but you must hurry. It will be dark soon.”
She is right. So we float along the forest path with our bikes in sport mode before we reach the edge of Schliersee, just 17 minutes before darkness erases the fairytale landscape.
Back at the Karma Hotel we warm up in the steam room before a swim before dinner.
Schweinsbraten – roast pork braised in beer – never tasted so good.
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James is an author and travel journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a love for exploring new cultures and discovering unique destinations, James brings his readers on a journey with him through his articles.
