Section Hike: E10, Kap Arkona → Stralsund, Day One
Hiking along the Baltic coast on the Island of Rügen
The journey from Berlin to Kap Arkona takes three separate trains, and then three separate buses, and about six and a half hours of travel time. I got up early in the morning on Monday and took the local train out to the edge of the Berlin commuter-rail network, transferred to a regional, and settled in for a long trip I spent mostly nodding off. The times I woke up, the outside looked like this: foggy countryside, rolling fields, and occasional villages.
Once I arrived at Kap Arkona the weather had cleared up a bit, and so I spent a while after eating my lunch taking some pictures and video down at the water’s edge. This ended up being the only video I managed to shoot for the trip that had any audio, as I shot it with my phone; I’ll post the raw video here so you can enjoy all sixty seconds of it:
From the beach, you take some stairs up the cliffside to reach the actual start of the E10, though this point — the northern terminus of a trail that extends all the way to the Italian Alps — isn’t marked. In fact, I don’t think I saw any signs or trail markings at all until I’d reached the central square in the village of Kap Arkona itself.
From there, the trail proper starts, though it’s more a gravel path for bicyclists than a foot-trail for hikers. My route for the day can be found here: I only had eleven kilometers to go to reach the campground at Juliusruh, at a point where a wide isthmus connects to the rest of the island. This northern portion is more of a tied island, with bays and estuaries and the Baltic Sea on every side, though it doesn’t have its own name. It was, during the Slavic Period, an important holy site; and the remnants of a number of neolithic forts and grave sites can be found along the way.
The island as a whole is also notable for thatch-roofed buildings, and a considerable architectural influence from other cultures along the Baltic coast. There are also occasionally recreations of pagan totems, though I suspect they’re more for the sake of tourism than any lingering folk religion.
The trail runs along the coast, at the top of chalk cliffs that line this side of the island. Small outdoor cafes were set up every kilometer or so, with spots to sit and watch the ocean and eat a slice of cake. I was sorely tempted to stop for a beer, but I pressed on.
The views stayed this dramatic for most of the day, until I crossed over to the inland side of the village of Juliusruh, and hiked a short stretch through a forest before reaching the campground.
Just before the campground there was a village park with a few of the wooden totems I mentioned, and then I reached the campground itself by mid-afternoon. Most of the campground was RVs and camper vans, or longer-term trailers, but the back corner of the campground was on the edge of the forest and relatively quiet, so I set up my tent there.
My first night’s dinner was the first round of pemmican and ship’s biscuit in mashed potatoes, and was my first field test of this alcohol cooker I bought from a seller on Etsy. I’ll have some more to say about that experience later on in the hike, but it seemed to work well. One notable difference between this cooker and my old MSR Whisperlite stove is that it is vastly quieter (the Whisperlite is a small blowtorch), though it’s definitely more difficult to handle.
It was originally my plan to go swimming at every overnight near the water, but the Baltic Sea at this time of year was far too cold for it, so instead I took some dramatic pictures from the beach on the other side of the road.
And that was my lid on my first day of hiking. I’ll post more updates over the next few days, and hopefully by the end of it I’ll have figured out how to get my video editor working, so I can post some of the clips I shot in a more coherent form.
More to come.