Today we had a bit of a lie-in. I made tea at 06:30 and we enjoyed it with our books. After breakfast we went in search of an ATM and a shop for some fresh food. I don’t know why but our impression of Sassnitz from a previous visit was not a good one but as we walked into the small town we were enchanted by the almost Mediterranean feel of the place and we really liked some of the houses that had been built at the beginning of the last century, or thereabouts. Sassnitz  has always been a holiday town, and I guess some people liked it here so much that they built holiday homes here or houses that they could rent to holidaymakers. One of the buildings that impressed us was the police station, at least we think that’s what it was from our looking at the tourist map that we had (see photo).

Not only is Sassnitz a pleasant town, it is also right next to an UNESCO World Heritage site, again a primeval forest but this time the principal tree was the beech, in a National Park called the Jasmund National Park of some 3000 hectares. The beech forests that used to more or less cover Europe disappeared during the ice ages, beech can not tolerate very cold conditions and that is why there were few in Poland, where presumably the winters are too harsh. Anyway, beeches are slowly spreading northwards and this wooded area around Sassnitz represents a success story for this magnificent tree. Another reason for UNESCO’s interest are the chalk cliffs and the shallow seas around them, which are spawning grounds for large numbers of fish and indeed some 20% of the park is this very area. However the primary reason is the old beech woods and the huge variety of ecosystems here, with some 100 bogs, lakes and streams within its boundaries. Of course we had to see this so off we set after lunch for an exploratory walk, firstly along the sea front and later climbing a little to get into the trees just where the chalk cliffs started.

It was delightfully mosquito free under the cathedral – like canopy of the beech wood. Even though there were people around, there was very little sound, it is as if people felt they were in church and could only talk in whispers, it was lovely. It wasn’t a long walk, or at least ours wasn’t, all we wanted was an outlook over the cliffs and after 20 minutes or so we got one. They really are crumbling away these cliffs, it would be dangerous to get too close to the edge – there was plenty of evidence of rock falls around. On the way back and on a different path, we found a series of wooden steps down the cliffs onto the beach. The beach is 100% flint pebbles and rocks, all originally from within the retreating cliffs. One exception to this was a huge boulder just a few yards out in the water. It had two iron bolts in it and there was an explanatory sign nearby. Apparently this coast used to have several boulders such as this one but most of them were blown up and transported to help make the long Sassnitz breakwater. These boulders are called ‘erratics’, they are the result of glaciation. Glaciers erode bits of rock as they move and they carry these within them. When the glaciers melt, the rocks are freed from their icy tomb. They may have travelled hundreds of miles in this fashion and our boulder was a surviving example of them, fondly known by the locals as ‘Klein Helgoland’ or its other name, the ‘Uskan’. The reason for the bolts is that there used to be a bench on it and a bridge to get sitters across but winter storms have destroyed it. Incidentally, Rügen folk call stones such as Uskan ‘Swan Stones’ as according to local legend, newborns are not delivered by storks, rather they are deposited on boulders such as Uskan by swans. Nice story.

Shortly after Uskan we went  inland a little and soon ended up back in Sassnitz, passing a nice shell shape roofed bandstand on the way. A nice walk in a pleasant town.  That evening, we went to one of the restaurants on the quayside and I had flounder and bratkartoffeln and Julie’s fish was her favourite mildly pickled young herring, matjes, also with bratkartoffeln ( fried potatoes, tiny bits of bacon and fried onion mix). It had been a nice day and we were glad to have made it here. Tomorrow will be an early start as we need to get over to Bornholm, 50 miles away and the wind is forecast to become quite strong later in the day, when we would hope to have made shelter in the marina at the capital, Rønne.