Selent is a village of barely thirteen hundred people at the northern tip of its lake, and the lake is the reason to come. The Selenter See is the second largest in Schleswig-Holstein after the Great Lake of Plön, a long, clear, slightly wild sheet of water fringed with reeds and woods, and the road runs along its shore for much of the way. The place sits at thirty metres above sea level, on a low glacial ridge, and the lake lies just below it.
The village has a manor house and a church, and the old estate shaped the surrounding landscape as a patchwork of fields, hedgerows and carefully managed woods. Many such manors, owned by the Holstein nobility, still dominate the villages and farmland of this part of the country, and a few have been turned into hotels or cultural centres. The ground beneath it all is the work of the Ice Age, rolling and lumpy, with hollows that hold lakes and ponds like loose change.
The riding here is gentle and enjoyable. Lanes wind between hedges and fields, dip into hollows, and rise again over low moraine ridges, with views of the water opening and closing between the trees. Surfaces are generally good, though farm traffic leaves dirt on the road, and in summer the lake draws swimmers and cyclists. Come on a weekday morning, when the water is still and the light slants over the reeds.
For fuel, Selent is too small to count on a station, and the nearest larger town is Lütjenburg, about ten kilometres to the north, which also has supermarkets, bakeries and cafés. If you are heading to the Baltic coast, it lies just beyond. Selent itself has a bakery or two and perhaps an ice-cream shop in summer. Pull in at the lakeside and have a sandwich, because the water is better company than most roadside tables. A quiet corner of Holstein, quietly good.