Beech Trees

We got the ferry at silly o’clock and arrived at Sassnitz at around midday. We found the tourist information to get some stuff about the national park and the World Heritage beech forest and then set off to explore. Sweden is relatively sparsely populated and it is only really busy in Stockholm and Gothenburg, so arriving in what is essentially the equivalent of the Lake District was a bit of a shock. Like the Lakes it’s expensive to park and do anything. We parked and cycled to the national park headquarters where we hoped to get to the viewing platform on the chalk cliffs. It wasn’t brilliantly signed so we went a longer way than necessary, but we did get into a beautiful bit of Beech forest where the blip is taken. Beech hasn’t ‘settled’ Scandinavia so this is about as far north as it gets; it is a beautiful forest. To get to the platform required a ticket to the centre and we didn’t think we had the time to explore properly the visitor centre. We went for a walk south along the cliffs and the extra is of the chalk cliffs of the national park.