Neukloster is a small town of just over four thousand people, tucked between woods and a lake south of the Baltic coast, and it is named for the thing that made it. In the early thirteenth century a Cistercian nunnery was founded here, and its brick church still stands at the centre, a good example of the Gothic building style that spread along this part of the Baltic. Brick instead of stone because there is no stone here: the glaciers left clay, so the whole region learned to bake its own building material and became very good at it.
After the Reformation the nuns' estate passed to the dukes and later to a school, and the former convent buildings and church still shape the heart of town. Inside, the church is plain and tall, with a long nave and some late medieval furnishings, and it is worth a short visit if the door is open. Outside, Neuklosterer See lies a short walk away, with a small beach that locals use and no hotels to speak of, which is a quiet kind of pleasure on a hot afternoon.
The inland sweep is what gives this stretch its charm. After the busy, polished coast with its seaside villas, the road turns inland to farmland and forest, with avenues of lime and oak, long straights over rolling fields and sudden dips through villages built of red brick. It is not a technical road. The bends are mild, the asphalt is mostly fine, and the speed is dictated by tractors and the occasional cyclist. In early summer the rapeseed turns whole slopes yellow, and in September the harvest dust hangs in the low light.
Neukloster is big enough for a petrol station, a bakery and a couple of simple places for lunch, though you should not count on long opening hours on Sundays. Wismar lies sixteen kilometres away to the north, a Hanseatic port with a UNESCO old town, and it is the place to go for anything bigger, including a full tank or a proper meal. Keep an eye out for deer on the edges of woodland, especially at dusk, and for farm vehicles pulling out of side tracks without much warning.