We had to be up and about and breakfasted in good time for the arrival of our engineer. With typical German timeliness, Lars as he was named, was here and ready to go by a couple of minutes after 8 and moreover, in direct contrast to his UK counterparts, he steadfastly refused offers of tea or coffee and settled down to the task in hand. The pump is installed deep inside a small cupboard at floor level, access to which is just inside the door to the cabin and as a consequence, the only way to get close is to put your body at right angles. Now this is hard enough but the pump is actually behind another one, so it is almost entirely invisible. As Lars said, admiringly, the engineer that fitted this must have had three hands! Anyway, after a significant effort, he finally removed said pump and decided to take it away to his workbench to have a look and also presumably to consult the technical manuals. He was away for a while, quite a long time in fact but he finally returned with a satisfied expression on his face. Now bear in mind his English was not great (why should it be?) but I think he was saying that there was a pressure release valve that was incorporated into the pump for applications such as pumping fresh drinking water but in its current use, it is not required. This valve had a rubber seal and the seal was perforated. He had removed the whole valve unit and replaced it with a non-valve top, so it was now bullet proof and sure enough, once back in place in the cupboard, it worked like a charm. Well done Lars, even though it cost us €120, it was worth it!

All was completed by 10:00 which meant that we had the day available to us. Pat & Keith had suggested that we take the steam train, a service which runs from just outside the marina all the way through to the town of Göhren on the east coast of Rügen (see photo). The idea was not to visit Göhren but to alight at a stop called Jagdschloß, as it was here that Prince Wilhelm Malte of Putbus built his fancy hunting lodge, called Granitz (in German, Jagdschloß Granitz). This sounded like an eminently good idea so we duly caught the 11:22, one of 3 or 4 trains a day to do this run. I have no idea what the train itself was but I was impressed by its nice shininess and when we stopped at our first stop, Putbus LB, I was equally impressed with its brothers and sisters, several of which were dotted about and in use. We had time to look around as there was a 30 minute re-watering stop built into the schedule but the time soon passed and we were on our way, being transported through attractive gently rolling countryside with large fields of ripening crops such as wheat, barley and oats or rye interspersed by significant tracts of woodland and meadows for cattle grazing. Very pretty. We alighted at Jagdschloß on schedule at 12:47 and the first thing we did was eat our chicken butties, thereby finishing off the chicken that we’d cooked on Sunday evening.

I suppose when you visit a hunting lodge you shouldn’t be surprised to see some of the hunters’ victims on display but here they were everywhere, including antlers forming the backs and legs of furniture. What I didn’t like and never have done, was looking at the self- satisfied smirks of hunters with their guns and the results of their carnage laid out in front of them – in this case rows of beautiful deer but I’ve seen others with buffalo, pheasants and so on. People go on about foxes in chicken coops losing control and killing for its own sake – and we do things differently? I think not.

Here is Wikipedia’s take on Granitz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granitz_Hunting_Lodge