Back to a wet boat

Saturday evening's meal was at a family favourite, Gasthaus Paesch in Spreenhagen. Their top dish consists of four pieces of raw meat, plus salds and sauces, served with a stone heated to 350°C. You cook your own meat at the table. It's fun, it tastes great, and it costs €12 a head. I don't know why we've never seen it elsewhere.

Sunday saw the wind gradually diminishing, although we were so far below the treetops at Wulkow it was hard to judge. Camilla got restless, borrowed Heike's bike and went off for a ride, initially on roads (which are either very quiet, or have a cycle path, or even both) and returning along forest tracks which are mostly more cycle-able than they look. Toughest was a kilometre of pure sand, ok if you keep going, and about 200m of cobbled road - I had to get off and walk after a bit fell off the bike! The land around Wulkow is very flat and heavily forested, which makes cycling the ideal way to explore.

Today we left Hangelsberg around 9am for the journey back to the boat, which was pretty painless, although an hour at Berlin Hbf forced Camilla to buy a necklace from Bijou Brigitte and a nice polo shirt from the shop next door.

The boat was undamaged by winds, but very wet below. Duvets were damp, the cabin doormat soaked, the bilges full of water, and four little cushions which have never even got damp before were wringing wet. It turns out that Friday saw a record 24-hour rainfall here, of 160 litres per square metre, which we think is actually the same as millimetres. That's about the same as the heaviest rain which has ever fallen on Northern Ireland in 24 hours, or about three months' rainfall for Suffolk.

Still, we dined splendidly on a pot roast of the wild boar we rescued from the Wulkow freezer, and tomorrow at the crack of dawn we hope finally to set off for Rügen.