Eutin's castle is easier to enjoy from the water side. Walk through the gardens at the back and the park slopes down to the shore of the Great Eutin Lake, with an avenue of old trees, a curving gravel path, and swans sliding across the surface in a V. The landscape garden was laid out in the English style in the early nineteenth century and is still planted with fine old trees, among them oaks and beeches that are well over a century old. On summer evenings an open-air opera festival is staged on a stage at the water's edge, and the sound carries across the lake.
The castle's moat and its low, brick-and-stucco front give it a gentle, domestic look, more country house than fortress, and the whole thing sits on what was once an island. It is only a short walk from the town centre, with its rose beds, its market square and its half-timbered houses, and a few good places for coffee. Rose growers in the area have given Eutin its nickname, and in June and July the town's gardens are in bloom.
The road to Eutin from the south, from Hamburg and the Segeberg country, runs through quiet farmland with big skies, past thatched farms and lakes glimmering between the trees. As you approach the lake district the countryside grows more rolling, and the road begins to bend. The surfaces are generally good, and there are many pleasant little lanes to explore. Traffic is light on weekdays, but summer weekends bring crowds heading for the beaches on the Baltic.
Eutin has about seventeen thousand people and plenty of filling stations, shops and cafés, while Malente has a spa-town feel and a long lakeside promenade. This is a good place to stop for lunch, with a choice of cafés on the market square. Kasseedorf, seven kilometres off, is a tiny village with a small manor house. If you can, stay until late afternoon, when the light on the water turns gold and the day-trippers leave for home.