A long day – 75 miles – and a rainy one, but thanks to Denmark’s quiet country lanes and good separated bike paths, rather fun. If you call cycling in the rain fun. Which, being a cycle tourist, I often do.
We surfed the commuter tide out of Odense on decent and well-signed bike infra. Sometimes the signage was puzzling: a bike logo with ++ added, for example. Hmm, like C++?
It was regulation Danish rural cycling in the grey morning, all good paths through trim managed countryside.
The first target was Nyborg, an hour and a half or so away. From there an hourly inter-island train runs ten miles across the sea on the Great Belt Bridge.
Until 1997 this was a ferry, but now getting between Funen and Zealand is a matter of minutes on Danish Railways. We weren’t the only cyclists on the crossing.
There was little traffic on the roads and lanes this damp morning. Perhaps everyone was in a hygge little cafe somewhere, having a pastry and coffee, and reading architecture magazines.
After snacking at the nearest supermarket on the other end, at Slagelse, the rain came down in sheets, and duvets and mattresses. Odour-free boots became a thing of the past.
I was impressed by several fine examples of thatching, all showing off the characteristic ridgeline pattern. This is one job AI won’t replace any time soon.
We had lunch at a dripping picnic table overlooking a sø – a ‘sea’, or rather lake, of which there are many here, and given the weather today, I’m not surprised.
Most of today was a long sequence of lanes upping and downing gently through villages and farmland. At one point I was surprised to see a few painted bikes set out as a monument outside a rural house, but then remembered that the 2022 Tour de France passed by here on its leg beween Copenhagen and Nyborg.
We’d been grappling with a headwind most of the day, but at last we turned gratefully north to enjoy a tailwind, and the tailing off of the rain.
I was tempted to try a wild swim in one of the well-signed lakes right on our route. Resolutely I took off my clothes. Then resolutely I put them back on without going in. It was far too chilly and windy.
Maybe with a car to dry off inside it would have been different. Not on a bike with twenty miles still to go.
Kirke Hvalsø had a supermarket where we could fill our panniers inexpensively – I’m getting nicely familiar with Danish brands of pasta sauce, chocolate and strong beer – and we found our guesthouse in the village of Kirke Sonnerup.
All our Danish accomm experiences have been good, but here we had quite the best, good-humoured, inviting and friendly welcome of the whole trip. And as the only guests in the place, we had the excellent communal kitchen and dining room to ourselves.
Hooray for the Viking B&B! I felt right at home. But then, coming as I do from an East Riding village called ‘Ferriby’ that was founded 1100 years ago by the Danes, perhaps that’s only to be expected.
Miles today: 75
Miles from Blåvand: 204