Spain to Norway on a Bike Called Reggie

by Andrew P. Sykes

  I was immediately rewarded with a cycle along country lanes and past quaint, single-storey thatched cottages with colourful front doors and gardens that wouldn't have looked out of place at the Chelsea Flower Show. But an even greater delight was in store. For several kilometres I had been noticing signs for Valdemars Slot – a Gothic-sounding castle, Danish style? Frankenstein meets Hogwarts meets Lego?

  'What is it?' I asked the only person I could find upon arrival at the large red-brick (and decidedly un-Gothic) building. She was running a canoe hire shop incongruously located in the gatehouse to what was clearly a stately home. Perhaps my question should have been more specific.

  'It's a stately home,' she explained. 'It belonged to the wife of the nephew of the man who wrote the Sherlock Holmes books.'

  'Conan Doyle?' I suggested.

  'No…'

  'Arthur Conan Doyle?'

  'No, he's not the author. He's the nephew of the author.'

  This was getting comical. Then she had a brainwave: 'Fleming!'

  'James Bond?'

  'Yes, James Bond – not Sherlock Holmes.'

  It can be so easy to confuse your British literary superheroes. By this point, I'd forgotten my original question so I let her continue.

  'It was owned by the wife of Rory Fleming, the nephew of Ian Fleming.'

  It turned out that the person who now owned the slot was an aristocrat who had given the place to his daughter when she married the lucky Rory. When they divorced, he promptly bought it back from her and she went to live in divorced bliss in London. The 'baron', as the canoe shop woman described him, was still alive and lived in a modest house close to the slot, which was now a museum dedicated to big-game hunting.

  Over the course of the next hour, I managed to turn an 8 km end-of-day cycle from the western side of Langeland to its eastern coast at Spodsbjerg into a 20 km obstacle course. This involved a 5 km cycling loop that brought me back to where I started ('Mmm… That's a very familiar bridge…'), hauling poor Reggie over deserted roadworks that blocked the entire width of the road and pavement, narrow paths completely encased in small trees but which finished at dead ends, and to cap it all, coming close to running over a man and his snarling dog, who both insisted on maintaining their statuesque positions in the middle of the cycle lane. I hoped he wasn't fluent in Chaucer but, following a colourful outburst from me, I cycled a little faster just in case he was. With over 400 islands to civilise, the Danish had a job on their hands and I could only surmise that Langeland was still on the work-in-progress list. It had been an odd, out-of-character place.

  Cycling day 55 passed in a very similar vein to that of cycling day 54 but with one added attraction: the return of a cloudless sky. The view from the shore where I chose to sit as I waited for the ferry to Lolland was beyond stunning: crystal clear water lapping the rocks beneath me, a horizon that almost imperceptibly melted into the sky and trees tumbling into the water on the other side of the cove, softening the sharp edges of the roofs of the red-and-white houses nearby.

  It would turn out to be a long day, stretching to nearly 110 km, but although my calves may have been straining, in most other respects I was increasingly at ease with my surroundings. Perhaps there was something comfortingly familiar about this country and its people that I hadn't experienced in any other place since leaving Tarifa. Even in the parts of France where I had lived for many years, as a passing cyclist, I was an outsider. Here in Denmark, however, where I was just as much an outsider as anywhere else, there were hints of home, especially when I watched the people and pointlessly eavesdropped on their conversations. In Maribo, where I had stopped to buy food from a small supermarket, I ate my mid-afternoon snack whilst listening to a group of teenagers who had gathered around the trolley park. I had no idea what they were talking about but I was struck by how similar they were to their British counterparts: spitting, ignoring old people who dared to collect a trolley, swigging high-energy drinks and subsequently burping loudly. It was all quite endearing.

  My initial plan had been to stay overnight in a campsite near the busy coastal town of Marielyst and when I arrived, there were certainly plenty to choose from. Alas, there were also plenty of families with their screaming kids – I preferred those who hung around in supermarket car parks, snarling at old folk – so I continued north along the coast and eventually stopped at an idyllic clifftop site near Ulslev run by a woman who had the financial acumen of campsite owner Josh Fiddler in Carry On Camping.

  'That'll be a hundred and ten kroner for the pitch.' Not bad.

  'But also thirty-five kroner for a Danish camping card – it's compulsory.' Ah… (Why hadn't it been compulsory on the previous two Danish sites?)

  'Showers are five kroner for four minutes.' All of four minutes? Luxury!

  'Washing machine twenty-five kroner.' It had been at least a week so going without was not an option.

  'Dryer is twenty kroner.' Nothing worse than damp clothes.

  'Two beers? That'll be one krone deposit for each bottle.' At least I would get the money back.

  Just like Mr Fiddler, she smiled as she detailed the charges and I was happy to hand over the cash. Had I known at the time that I would fall asleep to the soporific noise of waves gently caressing the beach just a few metres from my tent, I would have probably offered to pay double.

  The stretch of coastline north of Ulslev was considerably more wooded than anything I had so far encountered in Denmark. However pretty the countryside had been up until this point, I appreciated the subtle change from wide-open farmland to a more enclosed environment for no other reason than variety being very much my thing.

  Touring cyclists, who had been all but absent since my arrival in Denmark, also began to appear again. A naked wild camper waved most of what he could from his pitch near the water, a small train of four young women nodded seriously as our paths crossed (apart from the one at the back who smiled broadly and shouted a warm greeting; I suspected her cheeriness might have been wearing thin on the others) and when I arrived at the ferry docking point at Stubbekobing, numerous cyclists were milling around on the quay.

  By the time the boat arrived, most had disappeared, leaving just me, a couple of colourfully clad racing cyclists and a man in his Toyota to board and cross the 2 km wide stretch of water to the small island of Bogø. I say 'ferry' but it was more of a floating platform with sides attached to stop people, their cars or their bicycles, from falling over the edge. In that respect, it did a marvellous job.

  My journey across Bogø was never going to be a long one and, within a few minutes of arrival, Reggie and I were crossing a long causeway that linked it to my penultimate Danish island, Møn. At this point it was very much a return to how the cycling had been up until the end of the previous day: gone were the woods, allowing the ever-strengthening gusts of wind to pick up speed across the empty and ever-so-slightly hillier terrain. In a country whose highest point above sea level is just 171 metres (at a place called Møllehøj on the eastern side of Jutland), everything topographical was on a different scale, so cast aside images of great peaks and valleys. This was a landscape upon which giants could have happily played croquet. But after so many days of horizontal travel, it was a discernible climb towards the high cliffs at Møns Klint.

  I was doing myself no favours in travelling this far east. It would have been much easier to cycle the dozen or so kilometres to the bridge between Møn and Zealand than to deviate the 40 km to Møns Klint. But as I knew it to be the easternmost point of Denmark, I felt the urge to include it on my itinerary for the same superlative reason that I had wanted the entire trip to start in Tarifa and end at Nordkapp: I liked points at which thousands of years of geology had cut off the option of onward travel.

  It was late afternoon by the time I arrived at the large Møns Klint campsite a couple of kilometres from the cliffs. The owners had gone out of their way to embrace environmentally friendly tourism and the site sported a subtitle: 'Powered by nature'. At
its hub stood a large thatched barn, and all around were fields dotted with tents and motorhomes. Everything was in the open apart from the large free camping area set aside for the likes of me, which was in a clearing surrounded by tall trees. The most visible indication of the site's environmental credentials was in the communal facilities, which were shared not only with other campers but with high-speed swallows darting to and from their nests in the covered walkway. Somewhat distracting to begin with, but an arrangement between man and bird that seemed to be working well.

  This was clearly no big city with a host of attractions; however, I had been yearning for a day off which didn't involve much effort, so I decided to stay for two nights and take Sunday as my tenth day of rest. For a sunny weekend in mid-June, the campsite and surrounding area were far from busy. Indeed, on the second night I was the only camper within the clearing in the trees; I could almost have imagined I was wild camping.

  The cliffs, their wooded paths and walkways, and (according to the T-shirts that were on sale) the 994 steps down to the narrow pebble-strewn beach were marginally more populated but not in any way that could have been described as busy. It was simply a wonderful place in which to sink into nature, stroll, dip your feet in the sea, climb steps slowly, exchange smiles with others, think, take photographs and relax. I took great pleasure in indulging in each activity at length.

  I might have been a little less relaxed had I been aware of the unsteady nature of the ground beneath my feet. I had seen the warning signs beside the paths:

  ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK

  Landslides from the cliff occur most frequently in winter and spring but can occur all year

  But, as with most people, I dismissed them as an excessive dollop of health and safety nonsense instigated by ever-cautious lawyers. There were, however, good reasons for the concern. In 2007, following the wettest winter on record, two of the area's 128 metretall cliffs crashed into the sea, taking with them some half a million tonnes of Denmark and creating a new 300-m long peninsula in the process. Wars have been fought over less. This all happened on the night of 27 January. On 29 May in the same year, a new 'GeoCenter', constructed through the course of the winter, was opened by Queen Margrethe only 200 metres from where the collapse had taken place. In order to minimise the visual impact of the visitor centre, most of it had been built underground. Now, I'm no architect, engineer or geologist but could there have been a connection? If so, the authorities were keeping very quiet about it.

  * * *

  * The Conservative 'blue' coalition went on to win and Lars Løkke Rasmussen replaced Helle Thorning-Schmidt as prime minister, allowing her to go off and spend more time with her family. In her case this meant her husband, British politician Stephen Kinnock, son of Neil and Glenys… (BACK)

  THE TWENTIETH DEGREE

  55°–56° NORTH

  15–18 June

  Although the cyclist himself was bearing up well, after ten weeks on the road, various items of kit were beginning to show a little wear and tear. My laminated camping mat had developed an enormous blister that would have your average chiropodist sharpening a saw. It had the double whammy effect of reducing the often-slim chances of falling asleep, while at the same time increasing the chances of being woken when I did. The handlebar mount for my phone was no longer watertight due to a broken clasp. If the weather took a turn for the worse further north, this would cause problems in accessing online information whilst cycling. The extra battery pack purchased in Hamburg for use in the more remote areas of Norway was malfunctioning, making it as useful as a household brick. Of more immediate concern were my reading glasses; the old ones had a cracked lens so I threw them away as soon as I purchased a cheap replacement pair on a ferry. Perhaps, alas, the new glasses were too cheap, as the frame had already broken and they were held together with Sellotape. It detracted somewhat from the suave adventurer look that I had been trying, but failing, to foster.

  As for the bike, although he too was faring well after his lavish upgrade in Hamburg, I had become concerned by the lack of tread on the tyres, the rear one especially. I wasn't sure how poor the terrain might become in the final third leg of the ride but I was sure that bike shops would be increasingly few and far between. This thought motivated me to pull into a branch of Fri Bikeshop during my final few kilometres on Møn, in order to have both tyres replaced.

  It was thus with a little more traction that, after nearly a week of easterly movement, I was once again heading north in the direction of Copenhagen on my final Danish island of Zealand. The capital would hopefully be the perfect place to solve my equipment issues before I set foot on Swedish soil later in the week.

  Cycling route 8 had now finished and was replaced with route 9, which followed the eastern seaboard of Zealand as far as Helsingør. I knuckled down to the job of cycling into a headwind on an unseasonably cold day. I couldn't remember if any of the previous 57 cycling days had been so decidedly chilly. Despite it being late June, the combination of a north wind and a clear blue sky had the temperature plunging to the lower teens and me wrapped up like an onion. On a scale of 1 to 5 – with 1 being T-shirt, shorts and factor 50, and 5 being Captain Oates with a bit less fur – I had started the day at 3 and upgraded to 3.5 whilst Reggie's tyres were being replaced. As is often the case, I was put to shame by other cyclists, in this case three Germans – grandfather, father and daughter – who had paused beside the road. They were cycling from Berlin to Copenhagen and all dressed at number 1 on the scale. Perhaps they were putting more effort into their cycling.

  Then again, perhaps not. I realised that the older man and the woman were both cycling electric bikes. Although increasingly commonplace in towns and cities, this was the first time I had seen them used for cycle touring.

  According to the Confederation of the European Bicycle Industry, 20 million bicycles were purchased in the European Union in 2014, a figure that has been stable for much of the twenty-first century. When it comes to electric power-assisted cycles (EPACs), however, the picture is much less static. In 2006 only 98,000 EPACs were purchased across Europe. By 2014, that figure had grown to over 1.1 million, with Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium purchasing nearly three-quarters of all electric bikes sold.

  When I had met Kevin Mayne of the European Cyclists' Federation in Belgium, he told me that such was the popularity of e-bikes in some countries that many governments were grappling with appropriate legislation. How fast should an e-bike be allowed to go? Should they be permitted to use cycle paths? Is it just cheating for lazy people? (Sorry, I made that one up…). In British law, the following rules apply: an e-bike must weigh 40 kg or less, be no more powerful than 200 watts, not exceed 15 mph and have working pedals, and the rider must be 14 or over.

  It looks like the e-bike's day is coming and that in Germany, where there are now over 2.5 million of them on the road, it has already arrived.

  'How often do you have to charge them?' I asked the woman.

  'We plug them in overnight but that's enough for the following day,' she explained.

  I was beginning to see their merit, although I remained sceptical as to quite how long they would have lasted climbing the hills back in Spain.

  Powered only by human energy, I found a campsite close to Faxe Ladeplads, a town that should surely have had a character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy named after it. The campsite was a large, anonymous place populated with empty caravans and only a handful of people. Its saving grace was the nearby beach, which made for a wonderfully peaceful place to sit and watch the evening fade into night.

  The following day's cycle to Copenhagen involved me chopping off a chunk of coastline to shorten my journey to the capital but not before I had been given the low-down on the Danish thatching industry, courtesy of a female thatcher called Petina. Along with her boss, she was in the process of roofing another excessively pretty cottage but was more than happy to break off for a chat.

  'A thatched roof will last for about fort
y years so, although it costs around four hundred thousand kroner [forty thousand pounds] per roof, it's worth the money,' she explained.

  'Are there many female thatchers?'

  'I think there's just me. It takes four years to learn the trade and there are only three or four who train each year. I'm going to England next month to see how British thatchers do their job.'

  Shut down the mines, introduce a poll tax and ignore any opposition? I didn't want to spoil the surprise for Petina so refrained from comment and, after spending a few more minutes admiring her work, cycled on.

  —

  Copenhagen was on the horizon and, as I cycled around the long curve of the Køge Bay to the south of the city, I was beginning to encounter the urban environment again. I was now following a busy dual carriageway but there was, naturally, a segregated cycle path to use. As I neared the centre and as the red-brick buildings grew steadily from three to four and then five storeys, my mind was alert. I had read and heard much about Copenhagen, with its toplevel credentials as a city of cycling, and I was keen to experience it first-hand.