Denmark is one of those countries with five million-odd people: Slovakia, Finland, Norway, Palestine, New Zealand, Ireland, Yorkshire. (Perhaps for Yorkshire we can remove that hyphen.) I’ve been to Copenhagen a few times, but never explored the rest of the place.
This End to End aims to put that right. Or rather, centre-left. Because the Danes’ high-tax, high-welfare, high-happiness way of life is something I’m looking forward to experiencing in the best way possible – from the saddle.
We started from Flensburg, just over the border in Germany, at the southernmost Danish point. It hasn’t always been here, though: for decades up to 1920 it was much further north, thanks to the Prussian conquest of 1862. (There’s an entire Wikipedia page on the wanderings of the Denmark-Germany border.)
But since the Jazz Age, Denmark has started here: on the ‘natural’ Danish-German language divide, at the bottom of the Jutland Peninsula.
The pre-Schengen frontier zone, just south of Padborg, is now a collection of vacant customs posts and disused vehicle holding areas.
Now, the first thing you glimpse in a country can be indicative of something. What would it be for Denmark? A pastry bakery? A coffee shop? A pig farm? A progressive-left candidate poster for forthcoming elections?
It turned out to be a SEX DISCOUNT SHOP, whatever that is. Hmm. I thought the best things in life were free.
We glided into the lower reaches of the country along good quality roadside bike paths and quiet country lanes, heading west with a tailwind.
I stopped to admire the Bore Proof Fence I’d heard about, which stops bores coming across from Germany. Or maybe it’s ‘boars’, and something to do with swine fever and protecting the domestic bacon industry.
The barrier itself is simply a green wire fence about five feet high, the sort you might have round a smallholding to keep the alpacas and goats in. Though, impressively, it spans the 70km width of Denmark from coast to coast. I assume boars can’t swim very well.
The first place big enough to have a coffee shop was Tønder, a small town with a pleasant pedestrian street and square, and a few pavement cafes. The coffee was refillable free, the pastries sadly not. But they were good. That was some of my Danish-trope ticklist quickly ticked off, anyway.
Møgeltønder down the road was described as a ‘honeypot’, which usually means jams, but it seemed to consist solely of a deserted main cobbled street with terraced cottages either side.
We carried on heading west, conveyor-belted by the tailwind towards the coast, and it started to rain.
And rain. And rain. We turned north to follow the floodbankside bike paths, and got soaked. It was all a bleak landscape: no villages, no shops, just isolated farms, featureless flat agriland, and a grey fuzz to our west that was presumably the Skagerrak. Whatever that is.
There were some gravel paths which didn’t suit Nigel’s bike, with its 25-size tyres, and he was taking things very easily for fear of taking a tumble. I was in no trouble at all with my 35-size tyres, but was still taking things very easily, just because I always do. Don’t you do anything fast?, I’m often asked. Yes, is the answer. I get thirsty fast.
Anyway, quite a bit of gravelly, bridleway-ey tracks later, we got back on to tarmac, the sun came out, and we approached our target for the day: the west-coast historic gem of Ribe. Well-visited, and lively with tourists today, but I wouldn’t call it a picture-postcard place, and indeed I couldn’t find any postcards let alone stamps.
We rewarded ourselves for a longish (seventy-plus miles) day with a beer in a pavement bar in the cobbled, car-free cathedral square.
We stayed at a campsite cabin a couple of km away. With provisions from a Netto supermarket en route, I was chef for the evening. And sommelier, of course.
Miles today: 77
Miles since Padborg: 73