Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Learn To Listen To My Friends

December 9, 2006 by Mike

Hanstholm, 9 December

Route: Als - Hals - Frederikshavn - Skagen - Astrup - Løkken - Fjerritslev - Klastrup - Hanstholm

I got to the northern tip of Denmark today and realised -- blimey Mike, this is it, you turn round now and start for the south.. south and south.. and apart from the odd bump in the road you won't be heading north again until you reach the very bottom of Spain (Hola Hernan, Annie and family in Tarifa... the very bottom of Spain.)

That was quite a thought, made all the more tantalising by the fact that I had to search out my sunglasses for the first time in weeks in order to ride south and west. The sun was already low in the sky, but shone clear in a milky blue sky. Lovely. A body could get used to this. I intend to keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side from now on.

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Denmark gets narrower at the top. I could judge how far I had to go because distances to towns off to the west kept getting shorter and shorter. 64 km, then 40, 24, 11. Then I was on the last lap, through the homely town of Skagen, to a sandstrewn carpark, a locked art gallery and on to the last, windswept inches of the country.

'The northern tip of Denmark' is actually a little more dramatic than you might picture it. I had visions of elegantly-spare Scandinavian design. Perhaps something in pine, or plastic: smelling of Ikea. It's where the Kattegat, the body of water between here and Sweden, meets the Skaggerak which lies 'twixt here and Norway. The waves crash together very photogenically while a colony of gulls patrols the broken waters for disoriented fish.

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Briefly, the second most northern person in Denmark

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Southwards I rode, and westwards. I had a *destination* in mind. Normally, and truthfully, I'm able to reply to the daily question: "I have no idea where I'll stay tonight. I'll find out when I get there." It's an enormously liberating process.

Today, however, I have a cunning plan.

A few years ago my chums Charlie and Wenche came to Hanstholm for the weekend. You can read about their adventures in Charlie's book Attention All Shipping (you've probably just got time to buy several copies to give to yr loved ones for Christmas) but the briefest precis would go something like:

   Hanstholm. SO boring. Full of drunk Norwegians
   and nothing else. How the hell do I turn this
   benighted hellhole, the armpit of Denmark, into
   a chapter's worth of humorously purple prose?

(Read the book. You'll laugh. Unless you don't enjoy laughing, and that's why you're reading this.)

So naturally I wanted to come to Hanstholm and reveal the hidden happy heart of the place, those charming, life-affirming qualities that Wenche and Charlie had somehow overlooked.

But during the course of writing that book, Charlie also showed me that you cannot lie, fib or otherwise miscombobulate when writing about yr travels. We were in an opium den in Timbouktoo at the time. As I rolled my cigar on the thigh of a particularly captivating hand maiden (thigh maiden?) Charlie waved for another bottle of Chateau Lafitte '49, stopped polishing his glass eye long enough to squint in my general direction: "It is the duty of the travel writer to tell it as he sees it. You can't make stuff up or leave it out just because it helps yr story, what? Now where's my shotgun? I fancy a-huntin' me an elephant."

It was a lesson I took to heart. And so I have to tell the truth: Hanstholm is a dump. It's crap.

DSC02918 Nope. Can't think of a decent thing to say about it.

There's more to it than when Wenche and Charlie visited: the newly-opened Asylum Seekers' Centre. But the shopping centre is still dank and empty save for the drunk Norwegians on a weekend 'cruise' who tumble out of the 'Sir Henrys Pub' morning, noon and night to get more cash out of the bank machine. Saturday night in Hanstholm.

A small brochure lists the local attractions: taxi companies, petrol stations and the fish auction hall. On the front cover is a snapshot of a young family leaving the shopping centre. Mother, father and three slightly malnourished young boys huddle round their shopping cart, as if for warmth. They wear rictus smiles. The father looks as though the last time he was photographed it was a police mugshot. I don't think the boys, maybe 6, 8 and 10 years old, have seen a camera before. Their shopping consists of washing powder, beer, wine and tobacco. This image is being used to 'sell' Hanstholm to the world.

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Hanstholm's saving grace: the Seaman's Mission & Hotel is cheap, with a great location right by the fishing and ferry harbour.

1. I miss the chance to talk to an old, friendly seaman, long retired with a lifetime of stories bursting to come out. One reason is that he's giggling contentedly along to the TV. The other, I confess, is that he's *so* grotesquely overweight that all my questions would unwittingly end up being about food instead of foo-, I mean the sea.

2. Rooms 1-7 are non-smoking, which is fair enough. And the non-smokers have to make do with do with rooms 8-31. The poor things. No wonder they all have to come and sit next to me, wherever I am in this country, and spark up.

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Read in the paper that Friday was one of the deadliest days on the roads of Denmark - ever. Eight deaths in four separate incidents -- all in towns I've been through or will be in soon. In a country this size, that's a lot, the equivalent of 80 people dying on the roads of England in one day. (Yes, Denmark is that much smaller and still beat England at football. Probably.)

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