Satow is a village on the long, low plateau behind the Mecklenburg Baltic coast, a few kilometres inland from the sea and well off the usual tourist track. The town of Satow-Oberhagen has about six thousand people, and the countryside around it is a mix of cornfields, small woods and the avenues of old lime and chestnut trees that line so many roads in Mecklenburg. Following them is half the pleasure of riding here.
The ground lifts gently towards the Kühlung, a range of low wooded hills along the coast, whose highest point is only about 130 metres but which feels much bigger because everything around it is so flat. Beech forest covers the slopes, and the roads wind through it with a bend or two and a short climb or descent. After a day of flat roads it is a welcome change, and the sea breeze that comes over the ridge cools you on warm days.
The area has a lot of history. Bad Doberan, a few kilometres east, has a great brick Gothic minster, consecrated in the fourteenth century, which was once a Cistercian monastery church and is among the best of its kind in northern Europe. A narrow-gauge steam railway, nicknamed Molli, still runs from Bad Doberan to the seaside resort of Kühlungsborn, puffing through the streets and across the fields, and it is a wonderful thing to see from the road. East Germany's socialist era left its mark here, but the old villages and churches have outlasted it.
Satow has shops and fuel, and Jürgenshagen and Retschow are smaller. There are bakeries in every village, and a coffee and a slice of plum cake at a village bakery is a sensible reward. The bends here are gentle and the surface mostly smooth, with some cobbled village stretches. Come in late summer, when the fields are gold and the sky is huge, and leave time to follow the lanes you did not plan on.