Volderup, Denmark: We shall drink beer

August 14, 2015

The old mill at Elstrup will one day turn again

"YOU MUST come to my house and we will drink beer," the ticket-collector said. He took my tourist brochure, circled his village on the island of Aerø, and wrote his address.

We were on the ferry to an island of 6 300 people, an island with no bridge to the mainland. The crossing takes more than an hour.

I'm beginning to like Denmark. Not just because strangers invite me to drink beer but because it's at peace with itself. It's of human scale, with small farms, compact villages, immaculate roads and bike paths. I'm not sure I'd want to live here but I can understand why Danes are always said to be the happiest people in Europe: there's nothing around them that offends.

Southern Denmark: gentle rolling countryside with nothing to offend the eye

That happiness showed on the stocky, grey-haired man who smiled his way through life at the hostel reception desk. And, yes, that was in Vollerup while tonight I'm in Volderup. They sound like a sequence at a petrol station.

"You're not going to Aerø?" he asked in astonishment. He pronounced it euh-euh-euh-roh. That's as close as I got to it, anyway.

I felt like a waiter who'd given a vegetarian a plate of pork cutlets. I had made the wrong decision.

"Well, no," I said hesitantly, apologetically. "I hadn't thought of it, actually."

He looked at me like a schoolmaster uncertain whether to punish or despair at an erring child.

"It's beautiful!" he gasped. "Just like Denmark used to be. It's remote from the rest of the country, so they do things like they used to. And then, because tourism is getting more and more concentrated in Denmark, they make even more effort to be friendly."

And so I spent the morning on peaceful roads, wandering, to kill some of the time before I took the ferry. I explored beautiful white churches with impossibly neat graveyards.

Ketting: yet another pretty white church with an impossibly neat graveyard

I stared through the cobwebbed windows of a roadside mill that one day will work again. Inside, just about through the grime, I could make out wheelbarrows and carpentry.

The mill at Elstrup is slowly being restored

And then a curious discovery. I was riding slowly towards the sea, still making time pass, when I found a lump of aircraft on a concrete block. I wandered over.

Now, why would there be a lump of aeroplane by the roadside? I went to see

The story is that an American bomber called Stormy Weather was flying from southern England to Berlin when two engines failed. The pilot dropped his bombs, turned and began to limp back towards England. It was then that flak wrecked a third engine.

There was no choice but to land. Not least because the pilot had left his parachute back in England. Eight of the crew bailed out and the two pilots crashed into a field. The Germans put the whole lot in a prison camp. But come victory, they all went back to America, leaving the Danes to keep a bit of plane as a permanent souvenir.

It takes an hour to reach Aerø; it takes even longer to master the pronunciation

I had hours to wait at the port. Longer than I'd expected. I passed the time with a Danish woman who'd returned from Greece after 11 years. We talked for an hour not about the Greek crisis itself but how the people felt about it. Too long to recount now but I remember a long and moving account ended: "They don't blame themselves. They blame their crooked government and above all they blame the Germans: Merckel."

A storm broke out when I reached Aerø. Day turned into night but the deluge fell all around but not on me - to the grudging admiration of soggy walkers who called across to see what I was doing.

I'm at a rural, primitive campground tonight with the sea a couple of fields and a long drop behind me. It's an Old Testament scene, the sooty sky of the storm in the distance and a circle of sparkling sun on waves nearer the coast. In the distance, the mainland from which I'd come. Around me on two sides, a hedge of low wild trees. And on the other two, a two-strand wire fence with a gate, marked Graessende Dyr, set at such an angle that it closes automatically.

There are two abandoned baths and a water tap and a simple lavatory.

Where am I? On one of the rustic campsites that Denmark puts aside for those travelling simply. The only way in is a grassy track that no car driver would take. It's another example of how Denmark pleases. So far I have the place to myself.

The only way in is uninviting to car drivers

Today's ride: 38 km (24 miles)
Total: 3,818 km (2,371 miles)

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