—
Until mid-afternoon, cycling day 52 was very much a repeat of cycling day 51. The Ochsenweg was just as angular, the wind turbines just as majestic and my ability to follow the signs successfully for an entire day just as poor. I learnt a little more about the cattle route; it had first been used in the Bronze Age and later considered part of the Way of St James to Compostela, although I doubted the cows ever got that far. I even came across another surviving transporter bridge, one of the remaining 13. Just 11 to go.
After 65 km, I arrived in the pretty town of Schleswig – where quaint, one-storey houses surrounded an unbelievably well-kept graveyard and white church – with the intention of finding a local campsite and bedding down for the night. Schleswig was situated on the banks of what my guidebook referred to as a fjord – the term was clearly not exclusively Norwegian – and suggested a ferry might be required to get to the campsite, so I sought out the tourist office to check.
The two affable girls running the place lacked the essential skill that tourist office employees require: local knowledge.
'Can I catch the ferry to the campsite after 4 p.m.?' I asked.
The girls exchanged blank looks and there ensued a scramble of searching activity. This only ended when I picked up a leaflet with a picture of a ferry on the front marked Fähren and asked for translations. The last ferry had gone.
'There's another one tomorrow,' one of the girls suggested in good faith, but ultimately unhelpfully.
There was a second camping option but this was further along the fjord. Did I have the energy? Here too a ferry would be required to cross a narrow channel feeding the fjord. Was it still running late in the afternoon? A second frenzy of searching activity started until one of the girls had the brainwave of googling the question.
'Yes. It leaves at 9 a.m.'
'I've missed that too then.'
'No. It goes…'
The girl started to move her finger backwards and forwards.
'...all day. I think.'
To make them feel a little better about our encounter I asked one final, easy question. In all but one key respect they had been model ambassadors for their town. It would be good to end on a high.
'Is there a supermarket on the road to Missunde?'
I left the building none the wiser but with a smile on my face.
Via a wrong turn into an industrial estate, 10 km of winding country roads, a ferry attached to a chain and even a small supermarket, I arrived close to Camping Haithabu. Things were looking up. Now, where was the site? Online search… Err… 10 km back near the centre of Schleswig. This level of incompetence would surely get me a job at the tourist office. There was, however, a third site marked on the map, where I thought Camping Haithabu had been. I would at least check it out before setting off again. Camping Haithabu had sounded perfect…
But so was Campingplatz Wees am Ostseefjord Schlei. Indeed, I seemed to have stumbled rather inadvertently on a campsite that was about to rocket itself into my top five of the trip so far. It had everything that the previous night's site hadn't had: friendly welcome, free (and untimed) shower and a stupendous view over a wide lake upon which a handful of small yachts bobbed beside a band of yellow reeds. Magnificent. But it was cold so I wrapped up, sat down next to the tent and heated a can of beans to a temperature that began to compensate for the lack of warmth in my body.
Early the following morning I crawled from the tent as soon as I could detect sunshine streaming over the horizon. I took up a meerkat-like position and stood for perhaps ten minutes to allow my body to warm up. Despite the lack of heat, I couldn't have wished for a better location in which to spend the first hour or so of my final full day in Germany.
I fell into conversation with my neighbour, William from South Africa. He was 70 and explained he was spending the summer renovating a sailing boat moored nearby. I recounted my own midlife summer adventure.
'You're doing the right thing. My children are forty and forty-five; they're burnt out with the stress of their jobs. I can't understand it,' he explained, adding that the elder of the two had already suffered a heart attack.
William had moved to Germany with a new partner and had an eight-year-old son, although he no longer lived with the mother.
'I think here in Germany he has a much greater chance of living a better-quality life than his brothers in South Africa.'
It was difficult to disagree with him. I was coming towards the end of my two-week journey across Germany and had found it to be a land where the hard edge of Anglo-Saxon capitalism had yet to tread. Yes, they worked hard and, yes, they liked to make money but they managed to balance things out with a quality of living that so many in the English-speaking world seem to have cast aside as inconsequential. When my knees are knackered and my work finished, I too want to come and spend my summers renovating boats in an out-of-the-way place like Campingplatz Wees am Ostseefjord Schlei. Perhaps one day I'll be back.
—
It would be a short but hilly cycle to Flensburg, on the Danish border. The Danish influence was increasingly evident, and I passed many houses flying the Danish flag and numerous Danish schools. Here was the Schleswig-Holstein Question on display for all to see. 'Only three people,' said Lord Palmerston, British prime minister to Queen Victoria, 'have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business— the Prince Consort, who is dead— a German professor, who has gone mad— and I, who have forgotten all about it.'
That doesn't give me much of a chance but basically… it was a dispute over what belonged to whom: the Danes, the Austrians or the Prussians. In the end, they had several fights about it. The longterm outcome was that Northern Schleswig is now in Denmark and Southern Schleswig combines with Holstein to form the German region of Schleswig-Holstein – the one through which I was about to finish cycling.
By cycling the 15 km along the fjord to Missunde, I had moved away from the Ochsenweg. So, rather than double back to Schleswig to find it, I decided to make up my own cross-country route by cycling from small town to small town along country roads. It was a strategy that worked well and I arrived in Flensburg before the clocks struck 12 after just 40 km of cycling. I was now only 5 km from the Danish border but would not be leaving Germany until the following morning, as I had arranged via WarmShowers to camp in the garden of Franziska and her retired Lutheran priest husband Klaus.
I needed to be at Franziska's house at around 5 p.m. This gave me plenty of time to explore the city centre, although much of it was spent sitting beside the harbour and simply watching the world go by. As harbours go, it was a good one and, from my position at the southern end of the fjord, there was much to see. On my left was a wide promenade and beyond that the pretty harbour-front buildings. To my right was a hill smothered in greenery and large houses. In the near distance was a sharp steeple. I wondered if this was where Klaus had tended his flock. Immediately in front of me, on the water, was an eclectic mix of small boats: pleasure cruisers, sailing boats, yachts and colourful fishing boats. None were vulgarly large and it all appeared to be rather, well… Scandinavian. I could say with confidence that I was now in Scandinavia in every respect apart from actually having arrived there.
The cold night in Missunde had got me thinking about how suitable my sleeping bag would be further north, so when I finally dragged myself away from the thoroughly relaxing position by the harbour, I was on the lookout for an outdoor shop. I found one in the Groβe Strasse and went in for a browse. Before I could make it anywhere near the sleeping bags, I noticed a familiar face: Javier, the Argentinian who was also cycling to Nordkapp.
Our routes since Maastricht had been remarkably similar but they were about to diverge, with Javier continuing north through Jutland and me heading east to Copenhagen. Putting aside our respective purchasing plans, we found a café and sat outside in the sun, chewing over the trials and tribulations of our journeys to Nordkapp. Although I didn't know it as we chatted, it would be the last time I would see hi
m. Upon arrival in Norway he decided to find work and delayed the final push for Nordkapp until later in the summer. I left the search for a replacement sleeping bag until another day.
I found Franziska and Klaus's house not far from the spire I had noticed. It had indeed been the church where he had been the Lutheran pastor prior to retirement. They were both keen touring cyclists and able to pass on a considerable amount of good advice about cycling to Copenhagen. From what they told me, travelling by bike in Denmark couldn't be faulted. I did hope that it would live up to all my expectations.
We continued to sit, sip wine, eat Scandinavian chocolate and chat long into the evening. Klaus talked about his experiences growing up in post-war Germany and he certainly had a tale to tell. He was born in 1945 in an area along the Baltic coast that subsequently became part of East Germany. At the end of the war, his parents became refugees but the family was taken in by a local aristocrat who lived in a large house, where they shared two rooms for six years. Despite the tragedy of the situation, Klaus explained that, from the perspective of a young boy and with many other refugee families also living in the house, it had been great fun. I suspected that this kindness shown to him during his formative years had been instrumental in his choice of career.
The following morning Franziska escorted me on a short tour of her favourite local places, including the nearby Sankt-Jürgen Straße: a row of now-much-gentrified fishermen's cottages painted pale yellow, green or blue and many with flowers tumbling from the boxes beneath their tall windows. We then cycled the short distance to the meticulously restored merchants' courtyards in the centre of Flensburg. Here, as we stood in a narrow alley beneath black timber-framed houses, Franziska explained that the cattle being herded along the Ochsenweg would rest overnight before continuing their journeys to the markets further south. It seemed as fitting place as any at which to end my own journey along the route.
All that remained of the Bundesrepublik was a climb up a hill to a supermarket, where eager Danes were filling their cars with cheap beer, and then a freewheel cycle back down to the border. A large expanse of tarmac, once home to border guards and sniffer dogs, was now only host to a small collection of flags and one solitary sign reading: Danmark.
PART 4
DENMARK AND SWEDEN
THE NINETEENTH DEGREE (2)
54°50'–55° NORTH
10–15 June
Close your eyes and imagine the shape of Denmark. The image in your mind is probably along these lines: a big bit that sits on top of Germany and then a handful of islands on the right. But you've missed the detail…
The big bit on top of Germany is Jutland, of course, and quite straightforward. That said, you probably placed the border with Germany a tad further south than where it actually is. I'll forgive you but the Germans might not appreciate you reigniting the SchleswigHolstein problem. As for the islands on the right, there are, in fact, about 400. My job over the next few days would be to fathom a route across them as far as distant Copenhagen. Rather fortuitously, the ability of the natural world to fragment a country into islands is directly proportional to that country's ability to buy ferries and build bridges, or so it seems. Denmark had lots of them and I would be using many to hop from Jutland to Als to Funen to Tåsinge to Siø to Langeland to Lolland to Falster to Bogø to Møn and, finally, to the biggest of the lot: Zealand. Geography lesson over; let's get on with the cycling.
Remember how, at the supermarket on the German side of the border, the Danish had been filling their boots with cheap alcohol? The first thing I encountered on the Danish side of the border was a sex shop. What could the Germans be filling their boots with in there that they couldn't get back in the Fatherland? I had always considered both the Germans and the Danes to be very liberal when it came to such things but clearly the Danes were even more broad-minded than I had imagined. I could be in for an interesting week.
Spurning the opportunity to go inside and have my question answered definitively, I cycled on, and almost immediately turned right and headed east. My journey over the next few days would see me make almost no progress north but, as that – now knackered – crow would fly, 200 km along a line of latitude to the most easterly point of Denmark at Møns Klint. The plan on this first day was to follow a route along the northern edge of the Flensburg Fjord and over a couple of islands to the town of Fynshav, where I would stay overnight before catching the ferry to Funen the following morning.
Initial impressions of Denmark weren't great; they were exceptional. A long, straight road guided me down to the fjord and presented me with sublime views over a large expanse of clear blue water. Short wooden piers poked out from the shore with a few rudimentary boats tethered to their vertical supports. The road hugged the coastline and large, well-maintained houses with enviable views were scattered across the slope to my left. The gardens came in many shapes and sizes but, almost without exception, they all had a flagpole. Hanging from each one was a thin strip of material sporting the white cross and red background of the Danish flag. It was a sign of national pride with which I would grow increasingly familiar as I made my way through Scandinavia.
I had decided to follow Danish cycling route 8, the Sydhavsruten, or 'south sea route'. It stretched from Rudbøl near the west coast of Jutland to Møns Klint in the east and was signposted, somewhat sporadically, with blue-and-red panels. The lack of signs, however, didn't concern me. Why would it? All the roads were of good quality, with a wide and clearly marked cycling band on the right. Where a segregated cycle path had been built, its surface was never ravaged by the roots of trees and, unlike in Germany, pavement cycling was almost non-existent.
Upon arrival in Sønderborg, I paused to change some euros into kroner (DK) and buy food. People had warned me of two things that would shock me in all three Scandinavian countries: the cost of food and, especially, the cost of alcohol. In the first supermarket I found, I purchased a can of beer for 10DK (almost exactly £1), a bag of crisps for 6DK and some digestive biscuits for just 5DK. Expensive? Hardly. It appeared that even the cost of keeping myself fed was not going to dent my growing appreciation for all things Danish.
The final 20 km of this first day in Denmark took me away from the shores of the fjord to the ferry port at Fynshav. From my pitch on the campsite – itself a shockingly modest 75DK – I could see the ferry come and go a couple of hundred metres away. After pitching the tent, I eased myself into the camping chair and toasted my good fortune at having found a country that delivered as promised on so many levels. Could it possibly continue to do so all the way to Helsingør? Irrespective, it had been a great way to spend my birthday, which I celebrated with an inexpensive crisp in one hand and a warm, inexpensive beer in the other.
When I emerged from the tent in the morning, Denmark had taken on a different feel; it was cold and the sky grey. The ferry – a large roll-on roll-off-type ship – edged its way to the side of the dock with its bow door wide open (I failed to cast aside memories of The Herald of Free Enterprise), and then deposited me, Reggie and the handful of other island hoppers at the end of a long causeway. One of the first signs I noticed was indicating cycle route 8 which, if nothing else, confirmed that the ferry captain had chosen the right island from the 400 on offer.
The landscape of Funen may have been flatter than that of Jutland and Als on the previous day but the pretty views were quintessentially Danish: modest, tidy and meticulously wellordered. Much time was spent stopping, pausing, gazing and taking photographs, and as the afternoon progressed, the clouds began to break, allowing everything to be bathed in sporadic floods of Scandinavian sunshine. The signs – often sporting directionally challenged arrows and almost always absent in urban areas – weren't playing ball, but as most of my route hugged the southern coastline of Funen, the reassuring presence of the sea more than compensated for any frustrations.
Perhaps the cycling signs in and around Faaborg and Svendborg – the two main towns – had simply been hidden beneath the
hundreds of political posters. It was election time in Denmark, a fact that was hard to ignore. The general election was due to take place on 18 June and Denmark's first woman prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, was hoping to lead her Social Democratic party to a 'red' coalition victory against a tide of 'blue' Conservative opposition*. I wouldn't like to cast aspersions upon the morals of the Danish political elite but from the perspective of this casual observer, bringing the voters over to your way of thinking appeared to rely significantly upon the distribution of free pens and bottles of water. As a cycling writer, these were most welcome and as I pushed Reggie through the pedestrian precincts, I built up a small collection of both items, despite my initial protestations that I wasn't eligible to vote.
Notwithstanding the best efforts of a series of roadworks, I eventually managed to work out the complex algorithm preventing all but the most determined of cyclists from crossing the high bridge to the island of Tåsinge. Upon arrival, a short climb through Vindeby brought me to a T-junction. It was that time in the mid- to late afternoon when I was beginning to fight the temptation of following the main road – especially tempting in Denmark, where I knew that a good quality cycle path would be provided for me. But no, I would persist with route 8, so I turned left along a longer route via the coast.
Spain to Norway on a Bike Called Reggie Page 16