{"id":1998,"date":"2009-07-30T15:03:48","date_gmt":"2009-07-30T22:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/evilmoose.shafted.com.au\/?p=1998"},"modified":"2011-02-17T16:55:35","modified_gmt":"2011-02-17T23:55:35","slug":"cycling-denmark-27-30-july-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/?p=1998","title":{"rendered":"cycling: denmark (27 – 30 July 2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The transition between countries is gradual and easy on bikes. In comparison the ferry seemed sudden – but still less culture shock than an aeroplane provides. We rode off the ferry into a warm afternoon. The plan was to hunt down some wild internet (which we managed first try) and then track down one of the wild camping sites that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d heard about. As we cycled along rolling hills, swarms of midges were getting stuck in the sunscreen on our arms, legs and faces. There were also swarms of geese (that thankfully weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t getting stuck in the sunscreen), and lots of grain crops. And there were cuckoos again \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the first we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d heard since Japan.<\/p>\n

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Into Denmark<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

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Blue skies, warm day, shoulder to bike on, and CROPS!<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

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And we discovered that Denmark has public toilets! As we pulled in to visit one, I found 3 nymph ticks attached to my abdomen \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the first ticks of the trip, no doubt thanks to wild camping in Germany the night before. It also occurs to me that we’ve been seeing a lot of roadkill hedgehogs. I feel a bit like the international students who come to Australia, who come wanting to see kangaroos, but only ever see them as roadkill. I’ve never seen a hedgehog alive, but I’ve got a rough idea what they must look like, thanks to seeing so many flat ones. Today I saw a dead mole as well, which was quite exciting for someone who has never seen a mole in any form before. They’re a bit like platypuses, much smaller than you’d expect.<\/p>\n

We found our first wild camping site that night, and were amazed with what a perfect little set-up it was. Three log constructed bivy shelters, built into a hillside and with grass rooves. They were just high enough inside to set up our tent with the mesh inner only, to keep out the persistent insects, and had a picnic table and a lake to wash in, and then watch the sun set over.<\/p>\n

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Wild camping shelters<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

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Watching sunset from the roof of the shelter<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

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The following night we stumbled on another similar set-up (well, asked a passing jogger if he knew of anywhere nearby where we could camp), which was just as brilliant. Earlier that day in Saksk\u00c3\u00b8bing we saw a statue invoking lesbian farmwife solidarity (or perhaps that’s not what they meant by it?) and sat by it until the town alcoholics came out of the woodwork at 8.55am to claim their benches nearby. The organised alcohol drinking seemed to be a common theme in Scandinavia.<\/p>\n

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Lesbian farmwife solidarity in Saksk\u00c3\u00b8bing<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

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Krydsende cyklister<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

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The following night we reached Copenhagen (not before stopping by the coast and getting a chance to go for a very quick and cold swim). Entering Copenhagen was mad and hectic, bicycles everywhere rushing all over the place. The pace was a bit too much for us with our slow loaded bikes, and we ended up chilling out in the main square for a while watching gay men in red socks dancing with pom-poms (it was the World Out Games). The rest of that day was spent cycling around and seeing the sights, before meeting up with Sven, a friend of our Australian friends who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d lived in Copenhagen for a while. Sven had kindly offered to let us stay at his place that night, before we took the train over the bridge into Sweden the next day. It was odd to be back in civilisation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c our first night in a bed since the start of the month when we were in Dublin.<\/p>\n

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Ladybirds were everywhere<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

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Copenhagen<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

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Denmark certainly wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a cycling paradise along the lines of the Netherlands. We experienced quite a few randomly disappearing cycle lanes, and were riding on a few roads with a small shoulder and zooming cars \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but overall it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t too bad. A lot of the terrain we covered had the same crops and rolling countryside as Germany before it – I was beginning to get keen to reach some proper hills.<\/p>\n

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4000km – just before we get onto the train that will take us across the bridge from Copenhagen to Malmo (Sweden)<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

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Distance cycled:<\/strong> 250km
\nFlaginess levels:<\/strong> Moderate
\nPublic toilets:<\/strong> Plentiful
\nWifi availability:<\/strong> Good
\nGroceries: <\/strong>Expensive (but it does have Netto, Lidl and Aldi)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The transition between countries is gradual and easy on bikes. In comparison the ferry seemed sudden – but still less culture shock than an aeroplane provides. We rode off the ferry into a warm afternoon. The plan was to hunt down some wild internet (which we managed first try) and then track down one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29,141,1,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bikes","category-european-bike-epic","category-general","category-trip-reports"],"author_meta":{"display_name":"megan","author_link":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/?author=1"},"featured_img":null,"coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["bikes<\/a>","european bike epic<\/a>","general<\/a>","trip reports<\/a>"],"unlinked":["bikes<\/span>","european bike epic<\/span>","general<\/span>","trip reports<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"2","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 17 years ago","modified":"Updated 15 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on 30.7.2009","modified":"Updated on 17.2.2011"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on 30.7.2009 3:03 pm","modified":"Updated on 17.2.2011 4:55 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1998"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2924,"href":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998\/revisions\/2924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evilmoose.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}