August 15, 2015
Nakskov, Denmark: Pretty place, Denmark
DENMARK woke feeling grumpy this morning. Or where I was it did, anyway. The wind howled and moaned at everything. And when it grew tired of that last night, it turned to thunder in a long, long storm.
Two girls from Lille turned up yesterday evening, hitching and walking their way round the country. They left in a group from Brussels, which for them is as convenient as Paris, and then ditched it.
They parked their heavy blue tent at a discreet distance from mine. I heard them between thunderclaps. They were getting no more sleep than I was. This morning I could hear them breathing deeply in their sleep. I packed up and wheeled my bike away, wondering how much they'd regret having left the lighters for their stove out in the rain.
Everything was puddled. Patches of wheat lay flattened in the fields, no problem for a harvester but evidence of the storm. No one was around. I followed the signposted tourist route for cyclists, pondered the wisdom of using several unmade roads but survived them all.
Marstal, the island's capital, has no pretensions. It's the commercial and administrative area but it knows it's pretty and makes little fuss about it. It lies on the eastern edge of the island. It's a favourite with foreigners, especially Germans, because it's easy to marry there.
I met two such couples just yesterday. One was a German marrying a shy American and the other a German marrying a happy man from Gabon. Both women were white, the men black. The women - the Germans - said marrying anyone from outside the European Union was tedious in Germany because of the documents needed.
"We could spend a year getting them together," the second woman said, "then find there was a slight error and have to start all over again."
She was slender with a long pigtail and a colourful wollen bonnet. Her boyfriend was short and smiling and animated. They were both on bikes, she on a 1970s Gitane with spindly tyres she didn't know how to mend. She smiled.
"It is Germany, after all," she said. "We have to get all our forms exactly right."
The ferry port to the north is round a bay at AErøskøbing. It's not even worth trying to pronounce. It's on the signposts and the road goes there. Once you've left, you will never have to say it again.
AErøskøbing is far prettier. "The fairytale town" is how Aerø's guide describes it. It's the kind of place that saved Kodak. It's where colour-blind people go for a miracle cure. It's simply stunning.
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AErøskøbing looks snootily towards the horizon, smugly aware that Svendborg at the other end of the ferry line has little to challenge it. Svendborg has a delightful main square and it has a big bridge, which is inordinately hard to find. You wouldn't think you could miss a big concrete structure in the sky but, well, you can if you try.
And then there was the question of whether I could ride over it. Nobody in town seemed to know. I went to the tourist office, but it followed the global policy of tourist offices by being closed when there are tourists in town.
The best way, of course, was to find a cyclist. I found one, hailed him in the street like a taxi, and he told me to follow. When you know, the bridge is obvious. His expression made it clear he was helping a simpleton.
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The ferries between Denmark's islands are full seagoing jobs. It can take an hour or more from one to the other. That, to put it in perspective, is how long a ferry takes from France to Britain.
"There used to be ferries everywhere when I was a boy," a tall ragged-hair man of my own age said. He looked like a man who had stood on many mountain tops and stared into the snowy wind. "Now there are more and more bridges. They make it easier to get about, but they're not the same, are they?"
The bridge led to another, longer bridge, all the while on a path beside an unpleasant road. I spent a couple of hours waiting for and then sitting on the ferry, rode up the coast on the other side - giving a hungry German couple the gloomy news that there were no shops or restaurants between them and the port - and tonight I am camping in a field beyond Nakskov.
You don't, of course, pronounce it like it looks.
Today's ride: 92 km (57 miles)
Total: 3,910 km (2,428 miles)
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