Spain to Norway on a Bike Called Reggie
Page 18
'Cycling is not a goal in itself but rather a highly prioritised political tool for creating a more liveable city,' wrote Ayfer Baykal, the Technical and Environmental Mayor of the city. The city's current 'Bicycle Strategy' covers not just a two-, three- or even fiveyear period, but 14 years – 2011 to 2025 – and the document is littered with practical, costed plans that would make your average UK cyclist weep.
The goal is 3 lanes in each direction on 80 per cent of the network…
In 2025, most one-way streets for cyclists have been eliminated…
Funding has been allocated to intelligent traffic system solutions for cyclists. Pilot projects with LED lights embedded in the asphalt, perhaps with alternating use of space like virtual bus stop islands…
I don't even know what a 'virtual bus stop island' is. But I'm convinced that someone at Copenhagen city hall is busy making sure they build one.
The northern part of Copenhagen was a far cry from the industrialised and commercial southern side of the city through which I had cycled earlier in the day. We British would label it as 'gentrified', although I suspected that, this being Scandinavia, it had never been anything other than genteel. The best camping option appeared to be 7 km to the north, in a coastal suburb called Charlottenlund. It was either that or pay a small fortune for one of the few remaining hotel rooms available online.
Camping Charlottenlund Fort turned out to be a real find. Located within a small decommissioned military base dating back to 1887, it came complete with 12 cannons and was surrounded on all sides by a functioning moat. With that level of security, who needed a D-lock? It had once been a small cog in a ring of steel surrounding the Danish capital and helped to keep the inhabitants of Copenhagen safe during the fractious years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Alas, even wide moats and thick stone walls provided little defence in an era of air bombardment, and the network of fortresses, batteries, ramparts and floodable plains became somewhat redundant. In the long run, Copenhagen's loss turned out to be its gain, as many of the fortifications were now dedicated to the peaceful pursuits of leisure and tourism.
It was only a couple of days after my rest day at Møns Klint but that wasn't going to prevent me from taking time out to explore Copenhagen. Without the panniers and tent, I felt more at one with the 'normal' cyclists of the city as I pedalled back along the road leading into the centre. As I cycled, I counted the bicycle shops – there were 18, one every 400 metres – and watched the cyclists carefully. It struck me that, despite what I had assumed, many did wear bright Lycra and a sizeable minority were wearing helmets. Some even ignored red lights.
However, the most surprising thing of all was the number of cars. In a place so renowned for its cycle-friendliness I had always imagined them to be few and far between. But the roads were just as busy as in any other large town through which I had cycled. Copenhagen appeared to have found a way of building a transport infrastructure that provided for all rather than persecuting the carbon-producing drivers. More carrot than stick; there is a more environmentally friendly, healthier and perhaps even quicker way to get to work – come join us! But if you insist on taking the car, so be it. Was this the real secret of the Danish capital's cycling success story? Keeping everyone happy and on board, even those who weren't yet prepared to embrace the two-wheeled revolution?
Aside from stalking my fellow cyclists, the bulk of the day was spent wandering the streets with a large group of fellow tourists. Several competing 'free' tours of the city had their starting points in front of the town hall at 11 a.m. With price not being a factor – each guide earned money through tips – it was tricky to choose between them. The decision as to which group to join was based entirely upon a snap judgement about how engaging the guide might be. Those who gave the merest hint that any forced hilarity or, God forbid, audience participation might be involved were swiftly cast aside. I opted for a woman in her early thirties who turned out to be Irish. Despite her lack of authentic Danishness, she was a wise choice.
Admittedly, like any northern European city, Copenhagen wasn't at its best under a grey sky and an occasional downpour. However, Maria, the guide, escorted us cheerfully from interesting nook to fascinating cranny, recounting tales of past and present Danes and their exploits: of Tivoli, the nineteenth-century city centre amusement park and Christiania, its liberal 1970s cousin. Of Hans Christian Andersen, his outstayed welcome at Charles Dickens's house in London and his charmingly diminutive, if somewhat disappointing, Little Mermaid. Of Tommy Sneum, a Danish aviator-turned-spy who, in 1941, planned but failed to assassinate Heinrich Himmler with a crossbow. And of kings and queens, their 1,000 years of rule and the Crown Princess*, a Tasmanian-born Aussie of Scottish parents who first met the Crown Prince in a pub in Sydney during the 2000 Olympic Games.
With the tour over, I wandered around the colourful harbour before seeking out various replacements for my damaged or defunct kit and cycling back to the campsite for a second night next to the cannons. All that remained of Denmark was a relatively short but rain-sodden 40 km cycle to the northern port of Helsingør along the self-styled Danish Riviera. At times it was the kind of rain that left me cowering under trees in a vain attempt to stay dry. It was, however, much appreciated by the slugs and snails who basked in the dampness in their thousands along the quiet, tree-lined cycle paths I was following. To the many orphaned slugs and snails of eastern Denmark, I can only apologise, but please take comfort in the knowledge that your parents were squashed by a brand-new set of high-quality puncture-resistant tyres and I for one didn't feel a thing.
* * *
* Born Mary Donaldson in 1972, she is now Her Royal Highness The Crown Princess of Denmark, Countess of Monpezat and Knight Grand of the Order of the Elephant. Now that's successful social climbing. (BACK)
THE TWENTY-FIRST DEGREE
56°–57° NORTH
18–21 June
In the summer of 2014, a year prior to setting off on the cycle from Tarifa to Nordkapp, I had caught the overnight sleeper train from London to Inverness with Reggie by my side. More trains and rail replacement buses took us as far as Thurso and we camped beside the beautiful beach at Dunnet, before setting off on an eight-day adventure along the northern and western coasts of Scotland. It was all in aid of research. I had never before spent a prolonged period of time cycling along isolated, windswept coastlines and didn't want to be too surprised by what I found upon arrival in Sweden and Norway. The magnificent Scottish Highlands had prepared me well, throwing weather in my direction that would have had even Bear Grylls wincing, but I hadn't expected my research to be of much use prior to setting foot on the Scandinavian Peninsula.
The rain and blustery conditions weren't helping but Helsingør in Denmark had the appearance and feel of a distant outpost: a dead-end railway terminus, wrapped-up inhabitants and a squat, defensive castle. It reminded me instantly of the isolated towns along the remote Scottish coast through which I had cycled the previous summer. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. I had, after all, now crossed the fifty-sixth degree of latitude, the point after which the Scottish Highlands and Islands start rising above the Lowlands and fragmenting into the Atlantic. Did such a thing as summer exist this far north?
At Camping Helsingør I was allocated a pitch and as I reached for my already sodden tent, the heavens opened yet again. I returned to the reception hut and promptly upgraded to a cosy wooden chalet. Inside the small square hut I had everything that I could possibly want to keep me (and potentially four friends) snug and warm. Very hygge indeed. It was tempting to stay for however long it took for the climatic depression to pass but I knew in my heart that come the morning I would be itching to catch the ferry and set foot in Sweden.
In the meantime, I had a castle to explore, and not just any castle. This was the Kronborg Slot, home to Danish royals of old and, as the castle of Elsinore – Helsingør, anglicised – Shakespeare's Hamlet. Built upon a cape protruding out into the Øresund s
trait, viewed from the town centre it had appeared somewhat sunken, with just its upper floor, roof and towers visible. Even after I crossed its angular moat, the slot was still partially hidden behind high walls. Only once inside its square courtyard was I able to appreciate all its three storeys of Renaissance splendour.
The current building was finished in 1585, although a castle had stood on the site since the 1420s. Its main function was to levy tolls on passing ships making their way into and out of the Baltic Sea. At the height of its power, a third of the national budget of the Kingdom of Denmark was generated through the castle's tolls. When the ships couldn't pay in hard cash, they did so in the commodities they were carrying, including precious salt and wine. As a result, the cellars of the Kronborg Slot became home to a collection of some of the finest tipples in all of Europe. Aside from cash, salt and booze, control of the Øresund helped to keep Denmark a main player in European politics for centuries.
Shakespeare was inspired by the tale of a legendary Danish prince called Amleth, so he moved the 'h' and created 'Hamlet'. It must have been something to do with Tudor copyright laws. The authorities had, quite justifiably, seized upon the fictitious connection between Kronborg Castle and Hamlet, so there were regular reminders around the site, helping to give this solid lump of Danish history an interesting twist.
Fine dining had never really been on the agenda since setting off from southern Spain but having explored the castle, I found myself passing a modern building of gleaming glass and red brick. It was called Kulturværftet, or 'culture yard', and inside I could see a swanky café. Perhaps this was my opportunity to gain an insight into the wonders of Danish cuisine. Noma, René Redzepi's Copenhagen restaurant dedicated to revitalising Nordic food, was crowned the World's Best Restaurant for three consecutive years from 2010 and then again in 2014. By 2015 it had fallen back to number 5 but that's still not bad. I could only hope that the café of the Kulturværftet had been inspired to greatness by these culinary triumphs down the road.
I chose a dish of marinated herring, beetroot and red onion salad, served with two slices of dense nutty bread, all washed down with a glass of vintage red wine from the cellars of the castle (or so I liked to imagine). A small pile of salt crystals completed the carefully arranged scene and it was so delicious I would have been tempted to lick the plate clean had the pretty ensemble not been served on a slate roof tile instead. Perhaps this new trend for fine Scandinavian dining was the real reason why so many of the houses had to be thatched.
—
It was now cycling day 61 and the red, white and blue 'HH' – presumably Helsingør–Helsingborg – ferry was spending its day as usual, chugging from Denmark to Sweden and back again. For a modest 31DK I joined my fellow passengers on deck to watch Denmark get smaller and Sweden get bigger. They fell into two categories: Swedes transporting cheaper alcohol back home (Helsingør had plenty of off-licences selling it to them) and Chinese tourists. I put this down to the Hamlet connection. But it was 9 a.m. on a Friday morning; where were the workers? Where were the lorry drivers? Shortly after arriving in Sweden, I was in the town centre of Helsingborg asking myself a similar, but more general, question. Where was everyone?
The tourist office, where I had hoped to pick up some maps, was located within the Dunkers Kulturhus, but it was shut. The notice on the window, half in English, half in Swedish, explained why:
CLOSED FOR MIDSOMMAR
I sat on the steps of the Kulturhus for a few moments, searching for 'midsummer' in my electronic Rough Guide. It explained that during the summer solstice, or the weekend closest to it, the towns emptied as everyone headed into the countryside, and 'an atmosphere akin to Mediterranean joie de vivre takes over Sweden'.
I was happy for the Swedes, but it meant a muted welcome to country number seven and, initially at least, I would be on my own.
I reached for my phone for some Google route-finding assistance, but it was refusing to connect to the data network. That was taking public holidays to a whole new level. After a few moments of electronic fiddling, I gave up and concluded that it probably wouldn't start working again without the intervention of a call centre in Mumbai. I would have to do this the old-fashioned way. Looking at my paper map of Sweden South, I could see a cluster of green campsite symbols near the coastal town of Båstad. I set off in the hope that when I arrived at my destination, the Båstad Internet would be working.
The first half of the journey as far as Ӓngelholm was pretty standard stuff as far as the cycling went. The suburban landscape was alarmingly similar to that of a British town and, with it being so quiet and sporadically so wet, it was reminiscent of going for a bike ride on Christmas Day back home, albeit without discarded Santa hats strewn here and there.
When the wind started to slow me down north of Ӓngelholm, however, I knew that it was also pushing the grey clouds south. Sure enough, by early afternoon the sky was indeed a bit brighter. The effort required to climb a modest 200 m hill was almost immediately rewarded by a fast descent towards my destination, and local signage guided me to the gate of Båstad Camping. Although I was enjoying the opportunities for endless jokes about Båstad this and Båstad that, my guidebook pointed out that the correct pronunciation was /bow-sta/. This didn't stop me gleefully snapping pictures of comical references to the Båstad Polis and the Båstad Skola. The Båstad Internet didn't make me smile, however; my phone remained as communicative as a toddler in a strop.
Come Saturday morning there was good news on several fronts: the weather looked half decent, the campsite owner – a keen cyclist himself – had filled me in on the Kattegattleden (more of that in a moment) and several employees of Vodafone in different call centres across the globe had managed to fix my phone issues. How wonderful it is that we live in a world where someone in an office on the Indian subcontinent can sort out my problems on a campsite in Sweden. Once we had eliminated the is-this-customer-an-idiot? questions (is mobile data switched on? Is roaming switched on? Is the phone switched on!?), it was determined that my 'APN settings' were wrong for Sweden. Quite what APN settings might be, and why the Swedes needed different ones to all the other countries through which I had cycled up to this point of the trip, I remained ignorant. But they did.
So, back to the Kattegattleden. Had I never spoken to the guy running the campsite, I might well have spent the next few days fathoming my own way along the western coast of Sweden. As it was, I didn't have to, thanks entirely to the Kattegattleden. The Kattegat Sea sits in the gap between the coasts of Jutland to the west, Zealand to the south and Sweden to the east. The Kattegattleden was a cycle route that started in Helsingborg, finished in Gothenburg and followed a route along the Swedish coast that was as near as possible to the sea without actually having to cycle along the beach. The discovery of this Swedish cycling marvel reminded me of stumbling upon La Vélo Francette back in France. At the tourist office in La Rochelle I was perhaps the first to receive a brochure of the route that had yet to open officially. Here in Sweden there can't have been many other cyclists who had cycled along the Kattegattleden since its inauguration just a few days earlier, on 6 June. This was at the cutting edge of adventure.
As I cycled north from Båstad, it was a godsend. Every twist and turn of the route was well signposted, even when there was only the merest hint of possible confusion. Much of the path had been recently resurfaced and almost all of it was either off-road or segregated. The few drivers who happened to pass me were accommodating in the extreme and I began to forget the last time I had felt in any way threatened by someone behind the wheel of a vehicle.
The ultimate accolade that I could bestow upon the Kattegattleden was that it allowed me to forget about the nitty-gritty of cycling, and concentrate instead upon the more important jobs of relaxing and watching the world go by. The landscape wasn't spectacular but it was undeniably attractive, in a similar vein to what I had experienced in Denmark. Bronze Age burial mounds competed for my attention with black wooden windm
ills, smart red-brick churches and captivating views across a calm and empty expanse of sea. This, it seemed, was a day when nothing could go wrong.
After 80 km of cycling along the Kattegattleden, I arrived, unplanned, at a campsite adjacent to a beach just north of curiously named Ugglarp. The site was the busiest I had yet to encounter since leaving Tarifa, which I put down to it being the midsummer weekend. Although my preference had always been for quieter places, it seemed unlikely that I would find anywhere that wasn't equally full of life. My main concern was whether they would be able to fit me in.
'Yes, we have spaces for tents,' explained the young receptionist. As with all of her colleagues, male and female, she could have walked out of an H&M catalogue. 'It's three hundred and fifty kronor per night.'
I wasn't yet comfortable with Swedish prices but I knew that 100 Swedish kronor equalled about £8, so 350SK would be… Goodness. For one night?