The thing about Malente is that it is really two villages that grew into one, Malente proper and Gremsmühlen, with a short stretch of the Schwentine river between them. The Schwentine rises in the hills near the Bungsberg, flows through the chain of lakes here, and eventually reaches the Kiel Fjord some sixty kilometres to the north, and in Malente it takes on the character of a lazy canal, moving slowly under bridges and between villas with gardens that run down to the water. You can sit at a café by the bridge and watch small boats pass, with the quiet noise of oars and the occasional quack of a duck.
The town makes a good coffee stop because it is geared to people who are not in a hurry. For more than a century it has been a health resort, with a spa park, a promenade and a handful of grand old hotels from the age when doctors prescribed fresh air, lakes and good walking. Cafés cluster around the station and along the water, with tables out in summer, and the cake is generous. The Kurpark has paths and benches by the Dieksee and the Kellersee, and on sunny days walkers and cyclists drift through it at a snail's pace.
Riding into Malente from the surrounding country is a pleasure of small things. The roads run through rolling farmland and beech woods, past lakes that flash blue between the trees, and there are many gentle bends and short hills. The tarmac is generally good, though some of the lanes are narrow, and in autumn the leaves collect on the corners. Eutin, a few kilometres to the east, has the palace and the opera festival, and Plön, to the south, has its castle on the great lake, so the area suits a loop of an afternoon.
For practical matters, the place has about eleven thousand people, which means fuel stations, supermarkets and bakeries, and a station with trains to Kiel and Lübeck if the weather turns. Parking a motorbike by the station or the Kurpark is easy. Go in the morning for the best light on the water, or in the late afternoon, when the day-trippers have left and the lakes turn to copper. Order the cake of the day and ask nothing more of the afternoon.