When hot summer days arrive, one of the popular weekend day trips for Berliners is to Liepnitzsee, a beautiful lake with aquamarine waters in the middle of beech and pine woods. People go by train, car or bike and as the last option is perhaps the most fun, over the years we’ve explored many different routes to the lake. In the beginning we tried cycling from Berlin or Bernau, and now we’ve started exploring other bike paths as there are so many scenic ones in the area. Both last weekend and the weekend before, friends invited us to cycle there, and we tried two different routes:

1. From Oranienburg to Bernau via Liepnitzsee
2. From Buch to Liepnitzsee, then past Wandlitzsee and Krumme Lanke to Bernau

Oranienburg-Liepnitzsee-Bernau

Sometimes it’s hard to fit your bike onto the train in the summer months (there are bicycle carriages but they are often full), so the advantage of this route was that we could take a regional train just one stop to Oranienburg. Once there, it was a lovely cycle through countryside to get to Liepnitzsee.

We stopped at a farmer’s market on the way (Oberhavel Bauernmarkt) to pick up some some lunch. They sell tasty local produce like fresh milk, yoghurts and cheese, breads, pastries, jams, sausages, fruits and vegetables. One of the Germans on our trip said that the Brötchen (rolls) she bought were the best she’d had in a long time. We stopped on the way for a picnic lunch and then continued to Liepnitzsee.

Upon arriving to the lake we were in the forest quite high above the lake shore, so we walked a bit down the hiking trail with our bikes to get to the water. After a stop at the lake and a walk/ride next to it (on this occasion nobody had taken a bathing suit as we didn’t expect it to be so warm that day), it was time to head to Bernau. To get back to the high path, my husband decided to push the bikes up the hill to the path above. However there are also paths next to the lake that eventually lead out of the woods, so I’d recommend this route rather.

The ride back to Bernau was through some forest and then alongside the road. On the way there we stopped for some cake and thirst-quenching drinks at a restaurant called Waldkater. Then it was the last stretch to Bernau and onto the train back to Berlin.

 

Buch-Liepnitzsee-Lobetal-Bernau (around Wandlitzsee and Krumme Lanke)

The train going to Bernau was a bit full in the bike carriage on this day, so we spontaneously took a trip to Buch instead. There is a nice path from Buch to Liepnitzee. I can’t say I’d find it again, but my husband uses an App called Mapy.cz to find bike paths and hiking trails. The route first took us through some lovely wild-looking forest, then through the countryside and then through some pine forests until we arrived at Liepnitzsee.

Just as we arrived at an outdoor restaurant selling snacks and drinks, it started thundering and raining. We waited it out under the umbrellas. After that we found our friends using Google location and also by spotting their parked bikes, and spent the next few hours catching up and relaxing by the lake. It was very peaceful as most of the people had fled the lake when it started raining.

After some hours at the lake, we decided to cycle to Bernau on a scenic route that took us past Wandlitz, around Krumme Lanke and through Lobetal. It was quite off-road with some sandy patches we pushed the bikes through and quite a few hills (good training), but also nice stretches on wide bike lanes with lake fews, past haystacks wind turbines, and a field full of poppies and cornflowers.

 

After getting on the train at Bernau it felt, like somebody said, as we’d been away on holiday, as we’d seen such a lot of lovely things. There are many ways to Liepnitzsee, and I look forward to exploring more of them!