Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Cut Denmark In Half.. Ouch!

December 8, 2006 by Mike

Als, 8 December

Route: Frederiksværk - Hundested - Nykøbing - Odden - Ebeltoft - Grenaa - Lystrup - Randers - Ajstrup - Hadsund - Astrup - Als

Today, I took a huge chunk of Danish coast, rolled it up into a little ball and hid it at the bottom of my left-hand pannier, under a plastic bag with unwashed socks in. I'm hoping nobody will notice it's missing, and in time everyone will forget that a quarter of Sjælland, the north of Falster and Lolland, Langeland and Fyn and a third of Jylland ever existed.

Or in other words, I took a ferry and in so doing cut a huge corner in my trip round the coast of Europe.

Having said that, I set out to travel the mainland of Europe, so all the islands of Denmark have been a bit of a cheat anyway. (Can you tell I'm struggling to justify this? Especially as I've been witness to the mildest December in Denmark in the last 240 years so I can't even blame the weather -- very un-English of me. And it's probably very nice coast I've missed, with flower-strewn villages and sun-draped copses and fairy-tale castles and long sweeps of untouched beach.)

But you know what? There was the ferry port on the coast. And if I'm to go round as close to the edge as possible there was always going to be a time when I got just a little bit too close to that edge. So it's lucky there happened to be a ferry oat waiting when I rode off the side of Denmark, or I'd have gone straight into the briny.

And before I could try to explain in my fractured Norwegian "sorry but there's been a huge mistake. Instead of getting onto yr big, warm, dry boat and sailing across to Ebeltoft I meant to ride several hundred kilometres round every last crop and corner of this fair land. In December. On a motorbike. Kindly allow me to get off yr fine vessel before it sets sail" ropes were cast off and we were on our way.

We landed 45 minutes later, by which time my conscience was just about squared and the sun was coming out. I took this to be a good sign.

And what was I missing? My cousin Frederik (remember him?) used to live in Århus:

   Another place just north of Aarhus close to Grenaa is Mols. This is the
   origin of the "molboerne". Molboene were known for being extremely
   stupid, and if you call someone above 30 a molbo in Norway, most of them
   will know what you mean. I brought 2 portuguese friends up there when I
   lived in Aarhus. We met a couple and asked them to take a picture of us
   with my digital camera, I showed them how and lined up. They zoomed in,
   and "here you go" - gave the camera back with a happy smile in their
   faces and no pictures taken. Suddenly my Portuguese friends believed in
   these old sayings.

Fear of self-recognition stopped me from heading in that direction.

I was much happier heading north again, following the 'Marguerit-ruten' for a while. This is a nationwide network of roads thought to be of particular interest to the tourist. It's a great idea, unobtrusively sign-posted, a gentle prod up the lazy tourist's backside to convince him or her (OK, or me) to leave the main highway behind for a while and explore the backroads. Of course, this being cleanly efficient and prosperous Denmark, even the smallest lanes in great nick and entirely devoid of other traffic, so it's a pleasure to ride up them.

The roads took me scuttling through Grenaa and Lystrup to Randers, a town whose name can only be said in the style of Homer Simpson lambasting his neighbouroonie. On to Hadsund, straddling a broad river.. or what the Danes, who secretly want to be more like the Norwegians, laughably call a "fjord."

And onwards, ever onwards, but inland now.. and you know there can only be one reason for that. Another little town called Astrup. Still no postcards with the family name on.

--

I dropped down to the coast again in twilight. The sun now sets around 3.30 and darkness follows rapidly and totally. I can't get my head around it. Only last week (or so) I was in the Land Of The Midnight Sun. So I was glad to find a place to lay my hat in the first seaside town I came to: Als.

I say 'town'. There's a pizza place, of course, a grocery shop, a bakery and the Kro -- the inn, with bar and restaurant downstairs and half a dozen rooms upstairs. They also have old stables in the back, stuffed with odds and sods and, for one night only, a hard-ridden, much-loved Triumph Bonneville.

There are, for no reason I can fathom other than that the slightly bohemian owner cannot conceive of people who might want to steal another's property (unless she's a Marxist bohemian, in which she won't be happy with me considering the laptop, helmet or even my clean undies as "my" property), no room keys.

On the other hand, this is The cheapest Room In Denmark.

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