Tak Danmark!

We landed in Copenhagen after an uneventful flight over. Our bikes survived the journey with only minor injury. We were able to put them together in the airport and cycle on dedicated and well-marked cycle routes safely and easily right into the heart of Copenhagen. (Imagine doing that in a large city near you!) This was to be the start of a wonderful cycling experience in Denmark: great cycle paths, well-marked routes, bike-friendly traffic, many cyclists on the roads and paths, cyclist right-of-ways that motorists actually respect, great food, and friendly people.

As usual on our bike trips, we are camping in our tent most nights (except when it has been raining too hard, or Kate has a cold, or Kate IS cold). There are many campgrounds in Denmark, mostly very big and posh compared to Canadian ones! There are also some really neat wild-ish camping spots with basic shelters scattered across the country. We have lucked out in finding a couple of them. The book listing them and their locations is written in Danish, so needless to say, we have found them hard to find!

We are cooking most of our own suppers, and eating good bread, cheese and salami for lunches. Luckily, we get to stop most days mid-morning for coffee and a pastry!

We have been cycling mostly on cycle routes: these are either a road with a dedicated bike lane, a quiet road, a bike path beside a busy road, or a bike path all on its own. Even when we do have to go on the road with the traffic, we have not been beeped at once!

After much deliberation and route-planning, we decided to visit the city of Åbenrå, to visit the Commonwealth War Grave there. My maternal Great-Aunt Florence’s first husband is buried there – he was an air bomber in the Royal Canadian Air Force and was killed in 1944. Denmark was occupied by the Germans is WWII. I don’t know that anyone in the family knows any more of the story than that.

I am having trouble finding the time to keep you all posted on our trip. Blogging really is quite time-consuming, especially uploading photos. I am really more interested in eating, showering, and crawling into my sleeping bag at the end of the day than anything else! Not keeping up with it daily or every second day makes the task more onerous. We have only had one day free from cycling (today) since we started our trip, though some days’ distances have been short – due to weather and/or mutiny (you can guess whose). Last night we met up with Tim’s friend Phil – we are now in Northern Germany – and so have had a good day just hanging out. Tim and Phil had a great evening in Phil’s camper van last night polishing off a few beers and most of a bottle of rum, while I slept in the tent with TWO sleeping bags! Bliss!

We now have about 10 days to get around the North Sea coast into Holland to catch a ferry to the UK. It looks like we need to cycle a minimum of 80 km per day to do it, with no more days off, and no more GIANT triangles of Danish chocolate-almond pastry goodness! (I did experience some amazing German apple-quark-poppyseed cake today, which may be almost as good an energy-booster as a GIANT Danish triangle, we’ll just have to see.)

Pray for tailwinds! Luckily tomorrow’s forecast is for summery temperatures of 23 degrees. That will help the day go well, no doubt. Next update will be from the sunny UK, no doubt.