14 km trip from the village Herscheid ( ~7000 residents) to the town Lüdenscheid (~72000 residents) for some shopping in the evening.
GPX-Track : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eyhwR6o-HWweM-8kuIUHokJ4vfH3S9rE/view?usp=drive_link
Lüdenscheid is ranked as number 1 of the bike unfriendliest towns with 50000 to 100000 residents in Germany.
There are some comments in the video about the minimalistic bike infrastructure.
As the video is filmed in the late afternoon in November and there is no illuminated cycling infrastructure the return trip is very dark and partially just black. Cycling worked fine with the standard headlight of the ebike and an additional spotlight but the GoPro in TimeWarp mode is not as sensitive as human eyes.
The main connection between Herscheid and Lüdenscheid is a country road for cars with speed limits of 100 km/h and 70 km/h. This road is planned for renovation since about 15 years, but only about half of the distance is reconstructed. This part now has one car lane in each direction, a two lane uphill part for cars and a separated bicycle path. But the other half of that road is not yet renovated and has lots of potholes and not even a hard shoulder.Therefore cycling is very dangerous in that part. So I bypassed this part by cycling on small rural street, that are 2,6 km longer (6,4 km instead of 3,8 km) but with a good surface and very low car traffic. Then there is the dedicated bicycle path along the country road for about 2,8 km. Shortly before the highway entrance there are only hard shoulders that are often parked with trailers. So cycling is only possible on the road crossing the highway entry and exit. Not very safe. After the roundabout there is a painted bicycle lane on the road for the next 1,5 km. After the junction one car lane has been changed to a bus lane with bicycles allowed for about 400m. At the city limit all bicycle infrastructure ends completely and riding is possible only on the normal city streets between cars that are allowed to drive 50 km/h. Because of the blocked highway near the city nearly all highway traffic drives through the city on this street. Biking here is very dangerous. After the next larger junction with traffic lights there are some parts of the paved sidewalks allowed for bicycles. But as they are very small and designed for pedestrians it is difficult to cycle here.
The landscape around Lüdenscheid and Herscheid is very hilly with a hight of 150m up to 660m above sea level and cycling nfrastructure is very minimalistic and bad, not many people cycle here. Most cyclist do it for sport and use mountain bikes for forest paths. Only very few people use their bike for commuting or shopping. This leads to a low priority for improving the bicycle infrastrucure even though biking the hills with an ebike is not a problem.
Sources ( in German language ) :
Herscheid : https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herscheid
Lüdenscheid : https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCdenscheid
Bike unfriendliest town :
https://www.radtouren-checker.de/fahrrad-fragen/fahrradfreundliche-staedte-deutschland/
Time-lapse video of an eBike ride through the area around Herscheid (Westphalia) in the Märkischer Kreis in Sauerland in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The journey takes you along cycle paths, side roads and forest and field paths suitable for mountain bikes. The traveled area is around Herscheid between Lüdenscheid, Meinerzhagen, Plettenberg and Werdohl. The recordings were made with a GoPro Hero 8 or GoPro Hero 11mini on the handlebars of the Pegasus Solero trekking bike.