The Brocken and the Harz

The Brocken is a granite dome of 1141 metres standing well clear of everything else in northern Germany, which is why its weather is so bad: wind and cloud strip the summit of trees and give it a plant community that belongs several hundred kilometres north. A collection of those species is grown in the Brockengarten on the top. Metre-gauge steam locomotives work up to the summit from Wernigerode and Drei Annen Hohne, blackening the spruce as they go, and the Goetheweg from Torfhaus covers about eight kilometres on foot. Goethe put the Walpurgis Night of Faust up here, and the Harz has traded on witches ever since.

What you actually see

• The steam railway - metre-gauge locomotives working the gradient to the summit.
• The Brockengarten - a collection of mountain plants grown at 1100 metres.
• The Goetheweg - the eight-kilometre approach on foot from Torfhaus.
• The dead spruce - grey standing forest below the summit, left to regenerate.

When to go

June to September gives the best odds of seeing anything from the top, which is still far from a guarantee. Winter turns the summit into rime and horizontal wind and the train keeps running through it. Whatever the season, go early: cloud tends to build through the day, and the last trains down leave earlier than expected.

Honest expectations

Cloud sits on the summit on most days of the year, and nobody refunds that. The top is built up with a dome, masts and a visitor building, so it does not feel remote. The steam train is expensive and packed in season. The path up is a wide gravel road, and the forest either side is largely dead spruce after drought and bark beetle.

Nearby

Wernigerode's timbered old town, the Bode gorge at Thale and the mining town of Goslar.