Category Archives: Places

A walk to (and along) the border, Ahlbeck

This post is from a trip Katrin and I made to Usedom in February this year… another Baltic exploration:

The Europapromenade leads the walker or the cyclist, the jogger or the rollerblader, out from the town of Ahlbeck on the island of Usedom in a straight line between the trees. The surface is smooth, the path lined with benches to rest and public toilets and bike parks at the points along the route where there is access to the beach beyond the trees and the dunes. Ahlbeck is the last town in Germany, and the promenade is well-named, linking as it does the bathing resorts of Usedom on both sides of the German-Polish border.

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Great Reed Warblers, Rowing Clubs, and Fat Mary… Tegel, Berlin

Sunshine on Leith (and Newhaven)

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At the end of the Western Harbour breakwater we came to the abandoned lighthouse and climbed through a hole in the fence. The view back across the harbour was spectacular, to Leith and the Royal Yacht Britannia, and beyond the Arthur’s Seat, the castle, and the rest of the Edinburgh skyline. We picked our way cautiously through the broken stone and glass spreading out from the open doorways of the lighthouse. Graffiti and litter. Evidence of illicit parties. Few better places, on a clear day like this, looking across the Firth of Forth with a fly-by of eider ducks, exiting the harbour ahead of a Spanish warship.

Below us, on the slippery stones just above the waterline, a couple of fisherman discussed strategy. One was teaching the other, acting out the motions with empty hands as his friend gripped the rod intently. They both ignored the signs warning about eating shellfish from this particular shore.

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Where the white gold comes from, Meissen

Rubha nam Frangach – Loch Fyne

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The Rubha nam Frangach, or the French Farland, can be found a few miles south of the town of Inveraray on the western shore of Loch Fyne. The name of the promontory, and also the cottage that was our home for a week over Easter, dates back to the eighteenth century and the height of the herring fishing industry on the loch. Back then, over 500 boats a day would be operating on Loch Fyne, and on the French Farland a small settlement of traders bought, cured and packed herrings from the local boats and took them back to France, returning with brandy, claret, silks and laces that they sold to the aristocracy of the region, including the Duke of Argyll in his castle a few miles up the road.

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Strange light in northern Berlin

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The newsreaders on the breakfast radio swung between breathless excitement and dark warnings of incinerated retinas. Television crews headed to our daughter’s school where, an email assured us, all the kids would be supplied with the proper eyewear. Our Hausmeister patrolled the central reservation – normally reserved for doggy toilet runs and the rumbling trams – waiting for the moment. I went for a run.

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Snow Coming…

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A guest post from Silver How, by Chris Hughes:

You could see the snow coming
across the ridges to the north.
Long lines streaking the sky,
falling onto the orange bracken
and colouring the fell-sides grey.
But when it hit us
it struck with hard-edged suddenness
stinging faces and rattling on our clothing
pushing us quickly onwards
to the top of the hill.
Quickly over to the other side
to find the shelter of the rocks
and watch the snowstorm pass over.
And calm return.
And warmth.

The sun once more beamed out
of the clear blue sky.
But the hills had changed
now clothed in a thin mantle
of fine white lace,
over the shoulders of deep green
and rust-red growing up from the
gun-metal grey waters of the lakes.

The bare trees glow stark and silver
in the strong searchlight beam
of the fierce winter sun.

As we carried on down the streaming hillside,
soaked by the overnight rain
and the melting snow
we could see the spring struggle
to overcome the winter.
Buds and catkins,
and singing birds
led the way and we were pleased with our
short adventure over the
well-named hill of
Silver How.

Words & Pictures: Chris Hughes

The Invisible Border, Priwall

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The rain started to fall as I waited for the car ferry to take me from Travemünde across the mouth of the river that gives the town its name to the village of Priwall, on the opposite bank. Priwall sits at the end of a peninsula that belongs to the city of Lübeck. The hinterland to which the peninsula is attached belongs to the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. None of this really matters, except for the need to use the ferry if you want to stay within the limits of the Lübeck transport system. But from the end of the Second World War until early 1990 it did. Priwall was cut off by the inner-German border, surrounded by water and wire, and gazed down upon by watchtowers. The ferry I am waiting for was the only connection to West Germany, of which Priwall was a part. For the best part of half a century, the peninsula was – to all intents and purposes – an island. Continue reading →

The White Town by the Sea

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The road to Heiligendamm takes us through a snow-covered landscape rendered white and shades of grey because of overcast skies. A few kilometres inland from the Baltic shore and the villages betray the poverty of places with nothing to offer the weekend visitor or the summer holidaymaker. No access to the sea here. No promenade or spa hotels. A place to pass through, barely glimpsed at, as you make your way to the White Town by the Sea.

You could always take the train, the narrow-gauge steam railway called the “Molli” that will deliver you to the station of Heiligendamm as if the twentieth century never happened. Walk across the fields between the towns of Kühlungsborn, Heiligendamm and Bad Doberan, and you will come across Molli’s tracks. In 2007 hundreds of protesters used them to navigate their way as close to Heiligendamm as possible, where Merkel, Bush and the rest of the G8 leadership met at a Grand Hotel transformed into a fortified compound.

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An old summer camp in winter… Kühlungsborn

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I took the bus north, from the shabby concrete concourse of the Berlin ZOB. Waiting for the bus reminded me of travels that seem a long time ago now, catching the bus from Zagreb to Sarajevo or along the Croatian coastline, the entire series of Rocky films dubbed into the local language playing above my head as some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world passed by in darkness. As I stood in the cold with my fellow passengers I thought of Cape Town to Durban and the loss of feeling in my legs after thirty-odd hours, and the longest journey of all, from Berlin to Ormskirk via Hannover, Amsterdam and London. I have never been particularly fond of long distance bus travel.

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