Wiek Hafendorf

Description

NV Cruising Guide

Navigation

The approach is only recommended during the day. Stay in the buoyed waterway until you reach the harbour. The narrow harbour entrance consists of two stone jetties.

Berths

Harbour village Wiek: spacious boxes with stern piles at the jetty of the outer pier in the northern harbour or alongside at the chalk bridge (water depth 2,5m).

Surroundings

Modern sanitary facilities are available. In the village you will find restaurants and good supply facilities.

The old church of Wiek is worth seeing.

NV Land Guide

The former chalk bridge is the most conspicuous structure at the port of Wiek and at the same time a strange remnant of an industrial project that was cancelled some time ago. After the First World War, Arkona's chalk was to be mined on a large scale and transported or tipped into the chalk freighters on this loading bridge. In addition, the extension of the Bergen Altenkirchen railway line was planned. Obviously one had miscalculated with the project. The Wiekers were left with an industrial "monument".

There is little to be felt of Wiek's maritime tradition. Only a brig-rigged screw steamer from 1870 reminds of it; however not at the harbour and not in original size, but as a model in the worth seeing church in the middle of the village. The votive ship with square rigging once sailed the North and Baltic Seas as a coal ship.

Even in the great days of sailing ships, Wiek was not an insignificant port. Chalk was often loaded. But also fish and agricultural goods were exported. Nothing around the quay reminds of this heyday of maritime trade in Wiek.

During the heavy November storms of 1872, parts of the protective Bug peninsula were washed away, temporarily depriving the Wiek Bodden in the west of protection. Today, a two-kilometre-long stone wall ensures calm waters in the Bodden during storms.

Wiek has always been in a bit of competition with Altenkirchen (see Breege), but retained the upper hand not least because of its harbour. Even after the wars of liberation against Napoleon, it was the largest village on the Wittow peninsula, with 1700 inhabitants.

The focal point was and still is the church, whose showpiece is St. George on horseback, a 15th-century statue that by no means looks like a feared dragon slayer, but he is (or rather was) one, as legend has it.

We've already mentioned the votive ship in the church, but not the altar, which is well worth seeing, and a number of 17th- and 18th-century carvings that adorn the church's interior.

Walking a little way along the causeway north of the harbour, after about a kilometre you'll see huge boulders, the Varnowstones, jutting out of the water. In the opposite direction, about 200 metres south of the harbour, a rampart bears witness to a former castle complex, the origins and decay of which are unknown. Three kilometres further south, the baroque manor house of Bohlendorf (18th century) with its fieldstone courtyard wall is a fine sight.

Marina Information

Contact

Surroundings

Electricity

Water

Toilet

Shower

Restaurant

Atm

Fuel

Grocery

Garbage