View this post on Instagram

21.07.2020 Sand in our shoes. We have just come back 'home' from a visit to the third island of our journey. We are staying on the island of Rügen for four nights, and this morning we set off on a one-day expedition to Hiddensee, Rügen's 'little sister', leaving our tent and camping gear behind. So now we have walked the beaches of three islands, have had as many sea buckthorn delicacies as we could get hold of, and have collected quite some sand in our shoes. Hiddensee is definitely the most cyclist-friendly island of the lot, as there is no private and thus almost no motorised traffic there, and apart from that it offers incredibly beautiful natural spaces and – in our opinion – the highest density of thatched roofs. Rügen is, quite incontestably, the star of them all, with the most and poshest beach resorts. Places like Binz and Sellin were already popular when Germany was still an empire, and fortunately their splendour survived even when the GDR regime clearly failed to invest in the upkeep of their most iconic buildings, like Sellin Pier. The history of another place starts in the Nazi era and shows what madness can bring about: In Prora, we visited the impressive remains of what was once meant to become a seaside resort for 20,000 people, accommodated in a single, monstrous building complex with a total length of 4.5 kilometres. Apart from fantastic white sand to walk on, the islands and the northern mainland also offer quite a variety of surfaces that make for interesting cycle paths: There are old GDR military roads made of concrete slabs and panels that are now in different states of decay, dirt roads that can be quite muddy or quite sandy, and cobblestone roads – a phenomenon we used to associate with historic inner-city quarters only, but which is ubiquitous up here. We are curious to see what is in store for us when we hit the road again and leave Rügen tomorrow. #scoutbound #rügen #hiddensee #prora #mecklenburgvorpommern #mv #germany #kdfseebad #sellin #seebrücke #leuchtturm #lighthouse #sunset #cycling #worldbycycling #kreidefelsen #dünenheide

A post shared by scoutbound (@scoutbound.de) on