Rzucewo Beach

Thousands of years ago, people living on the headland at Rzucewo hunted seals and worked amber – an entire Neolithic culture, the Rzucewo culture, is named after this village. Today a narrow sandy beach runs below a wooded bluff on the Bay of Puck, free of the windbreak-to-windbreak crowds of the open Baltic, with a wooden pier and trees whose branches reach almost to the water. A kilometre's walk along the shore brings you to a reconstructed seal hunters' settlement.

The beach and the pier

Rzucewo is a small Kashubian village in Puck municipality, between Reda and Puck, north of Gdańsk. On the landward side it is surrounded by patches of forest belonging to the Coastal Landscape Park. The beach is narrow but quiet, and the bay is shallow – moon jellyfish, harmless to people, often drift close to the shore. Be aware that seaweed collects in places and the water can have a distinctive smell, so this is more a spot for sunbathing and walks than for long swims. A few steps from the palace, a short pier reaches out into the bay, with views of the headland and the village's almost wild shoreline.

The seal hunters' settlement

About a kilometre from the beach lies the "Seal Hunters' Settlement" Cultural Park, opened on 26 June 2013. The site was discovered in 1894, and from 1984 it was systematically excavated by Danuta Król of the Archaeological Museum in Gdańsk. The research showed that the inhabitants lived off the sea – fishing and hunting seals. The park has reconstructions of a hut, a dugout, a grave and an oven, each placed exactly where the original was found, and a wooden Kashubian cottage from around 1900 houses an archaeological exhibition with a viewing platform upstairs.

The palace and Sobieski's avenue

Above the beach stands a neo-Gothic palace from 1840, built by the von Below family next to the 17th-century residence of the Wejher family. After the Second World War it housed an agricultural school, and since 1996 it has been a hotel. After 1466 the village belonged in turn to the Wejher, Sobieski and Przebendowski families. A 17th-century lime avenue known as Sobieski Avenue leads from Rzucewo to Osłonino – according to tradition it was planted by King John III Sobieski himself when his sister Katarzyna owned the village.

Tripto tip

Combine the beach with a walk: along the shore to the seal hunters' settlement, then along the edge of the Kępa Pucka plateau – the blue Kępa Pucka Edge Trail and the European long-distance path E9 both pass through Rzucewo. Nearby, look out for the Twelve Apostles, a group of glacial boulders protected as a natural monument. Allow an hour for the beach and pier, or half a day with the settlement and the avenue.