The Spreewald

An hour south of Berlin the Spree loses its single channel and spreads into a maze of some two hundred watercourses through flat alder woodland, hay meadows and garden plots. For a long time everything moved by boat here, including post and coffins, and the village of Lehde is still reached mainly by water. The working craft is the Kahn, a flat wooden punt poled from the stern, and the standard visit is a slow loop in one of them from Lubbenau. Canoes cover the same channels at your own pace. This is also the heartland of the Sorbs, a Slavic minority with their own language on the road signs, and of the gherkins pickled in a dozen styles and sold at every landing.

What you actually see

• The punt trips - flat wooden boats poled along the channels from Lubbenau.
• Lehde - a village reached mainly by water, with an open-air museum of Spreewald houses.
• Canoe routes - the same channels at your own pace, with small locks to work through.
• The gherkins - pickled a dozen ways and sold from stalls at every landing.

When to go

May to September is the working season, when the punts run and the water is open. Late spring has the fullest channels and the fewest people; July and August are the busiest weeks by a distance. Autumn thins the crowds and the trees turn well. Most operators shut over winter, when the channels sometimes freeze hard enough to skate.

Honest expectations

The standard punt tour follows a fixed loop at walking pace with a compulsory stop at a tavern, and two hours of that is enough for many people. Lubbenau's harbour in July is a queue of boats and coaches. The water is brown, shallow and unremarkable in itself, mosquitoes are heavy in still weather, and canoe routes that run with the current mean paddling back against it.

Nearby

Lubben, the Sorbian villages around Burg, and Berlin an hour north by train.