Back in the van
The hotel breakfast in Aarhus is now a distant memory and all mutinous ideas have been fully suppressed. The storm has passed and we are now back in the van at a rather lovely campsite in The Danish “Lake District”. the campsite wins my prize so far for the camping spot with the best view. here are a few of my pics from today:
View of Aarhus Bay from our hotel
The Queen in front of her summer palace
View of the fishing lake from our van
Dinner is served
The lakeside at 10.30 pm
The Danish Lake District
We have now arrived in the Danish Lake District, near Silkeborg. It’s a beautiful campsite called Skyttehuset but unfortunately the weather is rather like the English Lake District, windy and showery and cool. Let’s hope it improves as we have 3 nights booked here!
An Infinite Bridge and a Royal Palace
This “infinite bridge” was next to our Aarhus hotel. It’s a circular structure over the sea you can walk on
And this is the Danish queen’s summer palace. Walking distance from our hotel. When the family aren’t in residence you can walk round the grounds.
Aarhus
Following on from the treacherous decision to abandon the van and stay in a hotel in Aarhus, we spent the evening exploring the town and visiting the central art museum (The Aros Museum). The Aros has a circular panoramic viewing platform on its roof (designed by Olafur Eliasson)glazed with rainbow coloured glass panels. Viewed from the outside you can see the silhouettes of visitors within the building. It was a very spectacular sight both from inside and out.
Click on the photo for more pictures
Abandon Ship
Torrential rain and thunderstorms were forecast for 2 days so we decided to book a hotel for 1 night. We viewed this not as cheating but common sense. We drove to Aarhus very carefully in driving rain, stopping at a large camping shop near Frederikshavn because someone I won’t name left the gas on which meant the kettle boiled dry and the handle melted.
We’re staying at the Helnan Marselis just south of the city of Aarhus on a pretty bay where I saw dolphins. It’s rather strange having so much space in our room after 2 weeks in our cosy van, which is the longest since we acquired it 2 years ago. (I blame Covid restrictions myself). It’s wonderful to have a hot shower without worrying how much it’s costing as Danish campsites give you a card to activate the hot water and every drop costs krone. The continental breakfast was a vast spread of Danish pastries, freshly baked rolls, cheese and excellent coffee. A nice change but it’s back to campervanning tonight. After all the cost of 1 night equals 4 nights in a premium campsite. Plus we love our van.
The rain has now stopped and the above photo shows our hotel room and terrace with sea view.
Grenen
Today we stood with one foot in the North Sea and the other in the Baltic. We cycled 3km out of Skagen along a long straight road busy with pedestrians, cyclists, cars and camper vans heading in both directions. We parked our bikes and joined the hordes of people walking along the beach towards the long sand spit in the distance. The people standing on it looked as though they were standing on the surface of the sea. Walking in sand was tough so we took off our shoes and socks to walk on the wet sand. A strong wind blew from the east, but it was mild. Still we went, onward, while the Sandormen (sand worm) tractor bus drove people nearly to the tip of Denmark. Because the narrow end of this sand spit is Denmark’s northernmost point. Would there be this many people at John O Groats? Finally we made our way to the end and paddled. Then it was back along the sand for a well deserved ice cream.
The Baltic (technically the Kattegat Sea) was much rougher
Than the North Sea (technically the Skagerrak)
Gammel Skagen
A hill is such a rare thing round here that the tourist office specifically pointed out the location(of the fairly small hillock) where this panorama of Gammel Skagen was taken. This the posh end of town, facing the west coast with the best sunset views (not today)! I enjoyed this view as I thought it looked suitably Nordic.
Gammel Skagen
And this is Gammel Skagen, the posh old town. This week it’s full of millionaires from Copenhagen we’re told. I spotted a Masserati and a Bentley.
Stjerneskud for Lunch
Which means shooting star and is an open sandwich with fried fish fillets, prawns, asparagus, black and red caviar, cucumber, lemon, dill and a thousand island dressing. Delicious!
And the coffee came with a tiny bar of dark Belgian chocolate.
Skagen
We have arrived in Skagen (pronounced Skain) Denmark’s northernmost town, largest fishing port and a popular tourist destination. It’s famous for its landscape and the Skagen painters who formed an artists colony here in the 1870s. Tomorrow we’re going up to Grenen point where the North Sea and Baltic meet!
Blokhus Salt
Prior to leaving the UK we purchased the Danish PinTrip guide. PinTrip is a scheme which allows mobile home and campervan owners to park for the night in selected locations at little or no cost. Mostly the locations are based at small business, cafes galleries, breweries and tourist attractions. Although you pay nothing to park your van for the night, the expectation is that you visit (and spend a few Kronas) at whichever site you are staying. We chose to spend the night at Blokhus Salt which was handily located between our last stop and most northerly tip of Denmark (Skagen) where we were heading. The owners collect sea water from the nearby beach and then use solar power to dry the salt prior to adding flavourings for cooking salts or perfumes for bath salts. We were given a guided tour of their salt drying facility including their solar powered salt drying racks and adjacent shop stocking multiple varieties of their home produced salt. There was also a rather bizarre doll museum in their garage, in the midst of which resided a restored golden Cadillac. The whole place had a slightly surreal feel. Our van was parked on their driveway along with two identical VW campervans owned by a Danish couple and a German family. The whole place started to look a bit like a traveller encampment, particularly once we all started cooking up our respective dinners on their front drive. This was our first PinTrip experience. We left with slightly mixed feelings and slightly more solar dried salt bath salts than we actually needed.
Cold Hawaii
We stopped off at Denmark’s premium surf spot, The Klitmoller beach also known as “Cold Hawaii”. Today it was more like “damp Hawaii” with a light drizzle, some sea mist and a few hardy surfers riding the smallish waves.
If you get a bit chilly after your time out on the surf, the mobile sauna could be just the thing to warm you up.
After this we saw lots of wind turbines!
Wind Power
Last night was very windy. I couldn’t sleep as the canvas in the top of the van (where we sleep) kept blowing inwards and the wind gusts were very noisy. We are after all in windy Northwest Denmark
As it was showery on and off all day, we visited Besogscenter Osterild, the large wind turbine testing site between Agger and Skagen. There was an informative visitors centre where I learnt increasing the size of a wind turbine blade by 50% increases its energy production by 100%. There was also a video showing the Seainstaller vessel setting up offshore turbines. A lot of cranes are involved. Denmark is a world leader in wind turbine technology and wind supplies half the nation’s electricity. They are very concerned about global warming and rising sea levels as they are a very flat nation!
Outside we climbed up part of an empty wind turbine tower and saw a 100m long blade on its side and the 8 large 150m tall wind turbines at the test centre.
I definitely know more about wind turbines now.
Roadside Shopping
Plenty of kerbside shopping opportunities on our cycle trip in the Thy National Park today.
A Cycle Trip in Thy National Park
The forecast rain didn’t materialise but the temperature has dropped at least 10 degrees and it’s quite windy. We cycled along route 1 cycle route, north of Agger, into the Thy National Park. The landscape was dunes, fjords and pine forests. We stopped at Lodbjerg Fyr (lighthouse) and climbed the tower for spectacular views. House martins were nesting in the eaves under the lighthouse lantern and swallows in the nearby buildings. We had a Danish equivalent of a cream tea at the nearby cafe, with butter and cheese instead of clotted cream. It was tasty! I discovered I had a flat tyre. Usually I let Danny fix them, but I decided I would fix it myself and did so with a little bit of help from Danny and a passing helpful Swede. Next stop on route 1 was the bonbon museum where we did lots of taste testing and bought some boiled sweets. Then we cycled a lovely route between two fjords back to our campsite.
Municipal Cycle Repair
If your bike breaks down at the Hvide Sande Lighthouse…….
You can use the municipal cycle repair kit to fix it. Complete with tyre levers, pump and allen keys.
My First Danish Pastry
In Denmark that is. Many of you know I love cakes so I was delighted with this delicious offering from the campsite bakery. Some of you will recognise the melamine camping plate (from my childhood camping trips) which must be 50 years old.
A Drive up the West Coast of Jutland
We left Hvide Sande and continued along route 181 with the dunes and North Sea on our left and fjords on our right. When we arrived at Thyboron ( lots of wind turbines and what looked like a gravel works) we took the short ferry ride to Agger Tange. It was hot today, 33 degrees, so the wind on the ferry was welcome. (I know that sounds cool to most of you after the UK’s 40 yesterday). We saw seals on sandbanks and many birds I can’t identify. We stopped at the visitor centre where swallows were nesting on the outside of the building. The drive to our campsite at Krik Vig was wonderful. The sea on one side, the fjord on the other. (Although it was incredibly flat as Danny pointed out. I think he misses hills. )
We explored the shore of the nearby krik vig fjord and walked into Agger. This small seaside town had an interesting group of small wooden buildings sheltering under the dunes. It became very windy and we realised why some trees are practically horizontal. We saw some kite surfers. Danny took a dip in the sea at the beach but I built a sandcastle. It’s rather like our family holidays at St Ives Bay (but warmer).
Norre Lyngvig
We are camping at Norre Lyngvyg near Hvide Sande (white sands) on a long spit of sand dunes between the North Sea and a fjord. It’s very hot (for us) 27 degrees so we swam in the North Sea to cool off and dozed on the beach.
