Faaborg to Odense

June 19, 2023

All was quiet as we left Faaborg on a sunny Monday morning. We cycled past their famous bell tower, down to the docks for one last view of the gorgeous sailboats both old and new before rejoining the Eurovelo 8 and cycling out of town.

It wasn’t long before we turned off the #8, which continues along the coastline, while we traveled inland on the local 51/55 cycle routes through the centre of Funen Island to its largest city, Odense.

The forces at work during the last glacial period formed a hill country almost encircling Faaborg, known as the “Alps of Fyn”. We cycled right through the middle of them. Local lore is that many years ago this area was desolate, overgrown with heather and the townspeople of Faaborg didn’t like to travel through the area at night and names of places along the way “Hell’s Hollow and Coffin Lid”, reflected their unease of the area. Today the hills have rolling fields, farms and well-kept forests. It had rained some during the night so for the first time in weeks as we cycled through a forest, it had heavenly pungent smells emanating from the ground and leaves.

Out of the Alps of Fyn, we turned onto a perfectly paved rail trail, paused at the spotless bathroom facilities and noted the picnic tables in the village of Korinth. There were few others on the trail as we passed through Espe, again commenting on the well-appointed bathroom building and covered picnic tables. But it was too soon for a lunch break so we pressed on to the larger centre of Ringe feeling confident that there would be more of these excellent facilities there. It started to rain lightly, not enough to warrant getting out our raincoats and we were confident that there would be the perfect shelter around the next bend, so we continued on, in and out of Ringe. By now it was raining and we were hungry for lunch but where were all the lovely picnic spots? We finally took refuge and ate our lunch in the bike tourer’s dependable friend, the bus shelter.

With full bellies we continued on to the beautiful centre of Odense and birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, remembered for his “Fairytale” stories. Odense is another delightful European city which we enjoyed over our two night stay but we are really excited to be here as we are meeting and staying with Steve’s old friends. Geoff and Vicky, their daughter Fiona and her boyfriend Alexandre.