Natalie Holmes enjoys a leisurely weekend at Germany’s Baltic coast…

Arriving on Germany’s biggest island, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d fallen down a rabbit hole and landed in toy-town. Impossibly clean and tidy villages host tiny houses. Litter, so prevalent in Berlin, is conspicuous in its near-total absence; the landscape is a compelling array of primary colours: intense greens, ever-deepening blues, soaring yellows.

Having decided to stop travelling by air three years ago, Rügen is for me the sort of destination that makes such a lifestyle choice not only bearable but highly enjoyable. It’s one of those places I’d have probably never visited given the option of jumping on a plane destined for some far flung beach resort with guaranteed sunshine and dirt cheap accommodation.

In this sense, there’s a lot to be said for Slow Travel: for me, one of the movement’s main pleasures has been busting the myth that the further away a place is, the better it must be.

A collection of diminutive, bucolic seaside resorts on the Baltic Sea coast, Rügen holds a special place in the German imagination. Frequented by famous names during the early 20th century, from Otto von Bismarck to Albert Einstein to Christopher Isherwood, the island was then concealed behind the iron curtain until relatively recently. Since German reunification in 1990, the destination has undergone rigorous renovation to become one of the country’s most popular retreats, where young and old alike go for some reinvigoration of their own.

Amusingly, Rügen is often dubbed the Brighton of Berlin, but that comparison is tenuous at best. For a start, Brighton is famous for its nightlife, but you won’t see any boisterous stag do’s or clucking hen (bachelor/bachelorette) parties on this island. Secondly, it’s 300km from Berlin – hardly daytrip material, as Brighton is from the British capital. Finally, despite an area of almost 1,000 square kilometres, Rügen has less than 80,000 inhabitants, compared to tiny and densely populated Brighton with its population nearing quarter of a million.

Putbus, the island’s oldest holiday resort, is a show-town for the archetypal Rügen scene: bright white villas and carefully manicured rose bushes—hence its two nicknames, Weiße Stadt (white town) and Rosenstadt (rose town)—as well as a recently restored theatre and church.

Founded in 1810 by Prince Wilhelm Malte of Putbus, who is credited with the significant accolade of having introduced sea-bathing to Germany, the town was constructed in the Classicist style, intending to create harmony between the palace and park. Despite the destruction of the palace in the 1960s, its ornate park remains a harmonious arboreal retreat, home to rare and ancient trees such as sequoias, cedars, horse, and tulip poplars that shelter red and fallow deer.

Continue past Putbus along the slim and—in places—cobbled road through to the island’s most southeasterly point, and you’ll arrive at a fairytale castle called Jagdschloss Granitz