Rugen Island Scenic Loop from Stralsund

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Stralsund

   Stralsund's skyline tells you at once that this was a rich merchant town. Red-brick Gothic gables, pointed spires and the enormous bulk of the Marienkirche, whose tower rises more than a hundred metres, crowd the old town island, which is surrounded by water and linked to the mainland by causeways. In the Middle Ages, Stralsund was one of the leading members of the Hanseatic League, the trading alliance that dominated the Baltic, and together with Wismar its old town is a World Heritage site. In the harbour, the three-masted Gorch Fock I, a sail training ship, is moored, and the Ozeaneum, a striking modern museum of sea life, stands beside it.

   Read the complete Stralsund write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Stralsund is where the day begins. Next is Putbus.

2. 2. Putbus

   Putbus is the odd one out on Rügen. It was not a fishing village that grew into a resort, but a deliberate planned town, laid out from 1810 by Prince Malte of Putbus, who wanted a classical residence that could compete with the grand capitals of Europe. Everything is white. The houses along the circular green known as the Circus are white, the theatre is white, the villas are white, and the town has long been called the White Town. After the grey of the East German years, it is a little startling to find such a polished set of buildings in a corner of the Baltic that is mostly reed and sand.

   Read the complete Putbus write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Putbus comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sellin.

3. 3. Sellin

   Sellin is Rügen's showpiece for the kind of seaside holiday that Germans were taking before the First World War: long white villas with wooden balconies and turrets, set on a bluff above a beach of fine pale sand. The architecture is called Bäderarchitektur, spa architecture, and Sellin has some of the best surviving examples on the Baltic. The grand hotels and villas run in a line along the cliff top, painted white and decorated with fretwork like icing, and the whole thing looks like a film set, only with real tourists in real deckchairs.

   Read the complete Sellin write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 49 km into the recorded legs you reach Sellin. Next is Sassnitz.

4. 4. Sassnitz

   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.

   Read the complete Sassnitz write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Sassnitz, about halfway. Next is Cape Arkona.

5. 5. Cape Arkona

   Cape Arkona is the northernmost point of Rügen and, for a thousand years, it was where the western Slavs kept their holiest place. On this chalk headland, about forty-five metres above the sea, the Rani tribe built a temple fortress dedicated to Svantevit, a god of war and fertility with four heads, and the whole Baltic knew it. In 1168, the Danish king Valdemar the Great, with Bishop Absalon, sailed up, stormed the fortress, cut down the idol and converted the island by force. The earth ramparts of that stronghold, the Jaromarsburg, still curve across the headland, and half of it has been eaten by the sea over the centuries.

   Read the complete Cape Arkona write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Cape Arkona sits at 113 km, late in the day. Next is Bergen auf Rugen.

6. 6. Bergen auf Rugen

   Bergen sits at the middle of Rügen, Germany's biggest island, on a low hill called the Rugard where a Slavic stronghold once stood. The Slavs, the Rani, ruled the island until the Danes took it in 1168, and the small hill-top fort fell to King Valdemar's men, who then converted the people by force. A short walk from the market square you find St Mary's church, one of the oldest on the island, built in brick in the twelfth century, with a plain, sturdy shape and a few faded medieval paintings inside. A tower on the Rugard, named after the writer Ernst Moritz Arndt, gives a view across the island.

   Read the complete Bergen auf Rügen write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 158 km.