Sassnitz is the harbour town for Rügen's chalk cliffs, and it looks like it has been practising for the role. Built into a steep hillside above a working port, it has a long stone pier with a lighthouse at its tip, a fishing fleet that still goes out, and a ferry connection to Sweden that runs from the nearby terminal at Mukran. The town grew up in the nineteenth century, when the railway reached the island, and the ferry link to Sweden dates back to the early twentieth century.
The real attraction is north of the town, in Jasmund National Park, where the chalk comes out of the forest in white cliffs that drop vertically to the sea. The most famous point is the Königsstuhl, the King's Chair, a cliff more than a hundred metres high, a landscape that Caspar David Friedrich painted in the early nineteenth century in one of the most recognisable images of German Romanticism. The cliffs are made of Cretaceous chalk, full of flint nodules and fossils of sea creatures, and they erode constantly, so there are occasional landslips and the viewing platforms have to be moved back. Inland, the beech woods of Jasmund are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that protects ancient beech forests across Europe, and a walk through them in spring, with wild garlic underfoot, is a pleasure.
For riders, the road from Sassnitz toward the national park is a gentle curl through forest, with a few bends and a well-maintained surface. Access to the Königsstuhl itself is on foot from a visitor centre car park, and there is a fee. The road around the coast is pleasant, but traffic is heavy in summer, and the island's speed limits are strictly enforced. The weather is changeable, with sea mist rolling in off the Baltic and the light changing quickly.
Sassnitz is a town of about eleven thousand, so it has fuel, supermarkets and places to eat, with fish sandwiches by the harbour that are almost obligatory. Smoked herring, Matjes and fried flounder appear on every menu. The harbour is a pleasant place for a coffee, with the boats creaking and the gulls screaming.
White cliffs and green trees look best in clear afternoon light, after rain has washed the air.