Maxted Travels with Modestine 1

Setting the scene, an Introduction

2006-11-05T16:04:00.000Z

In the summer of 2005 we both retired at the age of sixty. In August we closed the door on our house and set off on a journey that was to last thirteen months and take us to eighteen different countries throughout Europe.

It all began several years ago. With retirement still no more than a rosy glow on the distant horizon, we set off in our elderly, battle-scarred Volvo for an autumn holiday in Italy. Our goal was to drive to Padua, find somewhere to stay for a few days and continue to Venice by train. We had only a fortnight before we needed to be back at work but because we also wanted to visit French friends in Normandy on the way out and others in Franche Comté on the way back we opted to drive rather than fly. In any case, we have always preferred to "travel hopefully" and independently. Nor do we always arrive at our intended destination, being easily side-tracked on the way. This trip was no exception. It started to rain as we arrived in Padua. By the time we found somewhere to stay it was teeming and by the following morning the streets were awash with water, gutters overflowing and the dark clouds over the city were promising days of similar weather. We stuck it out in Padua for several days but the streets of Venice remained flooded and the rain showed no sign of stopping. As our fortnight's holiday trickled away we were forced to abandon our plans and set off on the long drive back towards England.

It was then that we had our vision. If only we were retired and had a little camping car this weather wouldn't really matter. We could simply travel further south, to the sunshine of Florence perhaps, and return to Venice when the weather improved. From that moment the idea began to develop. We have friends in several countries of Europe with whom we have always retained a warm contact but we have seen all too rarely. Released from work and with a small camping car we could take to the byways of Europe, explore its natural and man-made splendours, meet new people, visit friends again, become Old Age travellers – as opposed to New Age ones – and enjoy a gap year between work and retirement while deciding what we want to do with the next stage in our lives.

Plans for our Great Escape began with a search for a suitable vehicle and making financial arrangements to retire at the earliest opportunity. We purchased a second-hand tiny Romahome slightly earlier than expected when our faithful Volvo made that final journey from which no vehicle returns. We named our new travelling companion Modestine, after the faithful but sadly unloved donkey that accompanied the writer Robert Louis Stevenson on his journey through the Cevennes in 1878. Our metal Modestine, paradoxically received great affection from us and curious interest from so many of the people we were to meet during our journey. We were warned by our children that we should not anthropomorphises an inanimate object as she wouldn't like it! We beg to differ. She appears to have developed a definite personality during our travels, patient and willing certainly, but with a skittish, flirtatious personality. She has also displayed occasional moments of sheer wickedness, such as the chilly February morning on a deserted beachside campsite in northern Spain when she contrived to lock us out in the rain for several hours in our nightclothes, the wind howling in across the Bay of Biscay!

Faster than we could have imagined, the day for retirement dawned for each of us. We arranged for some young work colleagues to take care of our house during our absence, purchased a laptop computer and a digital camera and set up a website on the internet so that we could report back to our family and friends as we progressed on our journey, deliberately largely unplanned, just seeing where chance and luck would take us.

And so we set off across the English Channel to follow our star on perhaps the most exciting, stimulating and enjoyable experience of our lives.

Link to Index page

Map

2006-10-24T14:22:00.002+01:00

This map is selective and does not include many smaller places, especially where they cluster thickly in the areas where we stayed for longer periods in the Jura and the Languedoc.

The hot links over the points on the map name the places and link to the first or the main posting where the places are described. In some cases localities were visited a number of times.

For a fuller listing of the places visited please consult the index.

Return to index page

Index to the Maxted Travels European weblog

2006-10-21T23:30:00.008+01:00

The details given for each posting are:

A running number
The first day covered
The title of the posting (which is a hotlink)
The main places included.

Each posting was also individually archived as it was posted onto the blog site. These are listed in the right-hand column of each page under "Earlier postings".

Map

Introduction Setting the Scene

2005
1. 19 Aug Champagne-sur-Loue at Last!
Caen, Frazé, Châteaudun, Saint Saulge, Châtillon-en-Bazois, Champagne-sur-Loue, Arc-et-Senans

2. 22 Aug Bees, Bisous and La Montagne de Modestine
Quingey, Arbois, Nans-sous-Sainte-Anne, Salins-les-Bains, Mouchard, Foncine-le-Haut

3. 26 Aug Poligny and elsewhere
Poligny, Salin-les-Bains, Besançon, Cascades du Hérisson, Lons-le-Saunier

4. 30 Aug Swiss Roll
Port-Lesney, Mont d'Or, Les Rousses, Vallorbe, Lac de Joux, Chissey, Dôle, Mont Poupet, Villers Robert

5. 4 Sep Besancon and around
Pagnoz, Besançon, Amancey, Grotte d’Osselle

6. 11 Sep From France to Germany
Colmar, Biesheim, Tubingen, Leipheim, Rohrbach, Regensberg, Munich

7. 14 Sep Weimar
Solnhofen, Bamberg, Weimar, Stolberg, Jena

8. 22 Sep Munich
Bayreuth, Pottenstein, Bielngries, Munich

9. 24 Sep Hans knees and bumps a daisy
Taubenstein, Urschalling, Wasserberg, Herrsching, Andechs, Munich

10. 28 Sep Wilhelm Tell and Switzerland
Oberammergau, Neuschwanstein, Austria, Allgäu, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Klausen Pass, Furka Pass, Rhône Valley, Agarn, Chillon, Vevey, Lausanne

11. 2 Oct Back in the Jura
Dôle, Orchamps, Source du Lison, Besançon, Ornans, Buffard

12. 8 Oct Absinthe makes the carp grow stronger
Lons-Le-Saunier, Source de la Loue, Mouthiers-Haute-Pierre, Arc-et-Senans

13. 12 Oct The sunshine continues
Château-Chalon, Baume-les-Messieurs, Gray, Arbois, Reculée des Planches, Salins-les-Bains, Fraisans

14. 19 Oct Toodle-oo to the Loue
Montigny-lès-Arsures, Dijon

15. 21 Oct Cevennes up
Brou, Pérouges, Vienne, Le Puy-en-Velay, Le Monastier-sur-Gazeille

16. 25 Oct In the hoofprints of Modestine
St. Martin-de-Fugères, Goudet, Lac du Bouchet, Langogne, Cheylard l’Evêque, Luc, Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, Mende, Chasseradès, Sommet de Finiels, Pont de Montvert, Florac, Cassagnas, St. Germain-de-Calberte, St. Jean-du-Gard, Corniche des Cevennes, Gorges du Tarn, Sainte-Enimie, Causse de Larzac, Caylar

17. 30 Oct Into the Languedoc
Ambre-les-Espagnolettes, Saint-Chinian, Saint-Pons, Béziers, Cap d’Agde

18. 4 Nov Cathar country
Minerve, Aigne, Olargues, Boubals, Bédarieux, Le Moulin de la Roque, Fontcaude, Pezenas

19. 10 Nov Storms and floods
Roquebrun, Canal du Midi, Ecluses de Fonseranes, Narbonne

20. 15 Nov Pigs, paintings and poubelles
Agde, Oppidum d'Ensérune, Carcasonne, Castres

21. 19 Nov Saint Chinian and around
St Chinian, Cessenon, Berlou

22. 21 Nov Wholly snug on the holy trail
Rennes-le-Château, Montségur, Foix, Lourdes, Orthez, Salies-de-Béarn, Sauveterre, Cambo-les-Bains, Urrugne

23. 27 Nov The round of the Basque villes
St. Jean de Luz , Biarritz, San Sebastian, Capbreton, Soustons

24. 30 Nov Rose red cities
Nogaro, Auch, Toulouse, Cordes, Albi

25. 3 Dec Look back in Ambre
Lacaune, La Salvetat, Saint Chinian, Béziers

26. 12 Dec Starting to feel like Christmas at last
Capestang, Narbonne, Cruzy, Fontcaude, Sète, Saint-Chinian

27. 18 Dec The ups and downs of Languedoc
Gorge d’Héric, Vieussan, Lodève, Cirque de Navacelles, St.Guilhem-le-Désert, Lac du Salagou

28. 22 Dec Baubles at Boubals
Boubals, Montpellier, Bédarieux, Marseillan, St. Gervais-sur-Mare, Lamalou

29. 27 Dec Nîmes and Avignon
St.Gilles, Nîmes, Avignon

30. 30 Dec Farewell to 2005 in Avignon
Avignon, Villeneuve-lès-Avignon

2006

31. 1 Jan Happy new ear from Van Gogh and us
Pont du Gard, Beaucaire, Tarascon, Arles

32. 3 Jan Around the Camargue
Camargue, Saintes Maries de la Mer, Aigues-Mortes, la Grande Motte, Mèze

33. 6 Jan Catalonia
Collioure, Perpignan, Quéribus

34. 16 Jan ¡Viva Espana!
Estartit, Figueres, Cadaques

35. 20 Jan Girona and Barcelona
Estartit, Toroella de Montgri, Girona, Barcelona, Blanes

36. 23 Jan Home and dry
Blanes, Cullera, Almerimar

37. 30 Jan Ronda - a welcome in the hillside
Roquetas de Mar, Torremolinos, Marbella, Ronda

38. 4 Feb Gibraltar and Trafalgar
Parque Natural de los Alcornocales, La Línea, Gibraltar, Tarifa, Baelo Claudia, Cape Trafalgar

39. 7 Feb Return to Cadiz
Chiclana de la Frontera, Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz

40. 11 Feb The Wild West and beyond
Puerto de Santa Maria, El Rocio, Olhão, Tavira

41. 13 Feb The ends of the world
Cape St Vincent, Sagres, Lagos, Monchique, Evora

42. 16 Feb Evora and Coimbra
Evora, Coimbra, Viano do Castelo

43. 20 Feb All the Way to Santiago
Viana do Castelo, Caminha, Santiago de Compostela, Cabo Finisterre, Carnota, Puerto de Vega

44. 26 Feb A peek at the Picos
Candas, Gijon, Cangas de Onis, San Vicente de la Barquera, Nuestra Señora de Lebeña, Potes, San Toribio des Liebana, Picos de Europa

45. 28 Feb Cantabria to Gascony
Comillas, Santillana del Mar, Ainhoa, Salies de Béarn, Lelin-Lapujolle, Condom, Fourcés, Pujol

46. 5 Mar How far has mankind progressed?
Tournon d’Agenais, Monpazier, Lalinde, Molières, Cadouin, Beynac et Cazenac, La Roque Gageac, Domme, Font-de-Gaume, Oradour sur Glane

47. 8 Mar Homeward bound
Loches, Pocé, Lavardine, Caen, Ouistreham

48. 29 Mar Maxted travels part 2
England (Didcot and Exeter), Caen

49. 3 Apr Manifestly Paris

50. 5 Apr Encore Paris

51. 9 Apr Caen again
Caen, St Pierre-sur-Dives

52. 11 Apr Guissény

53. 15 Apr Around the coast of Brittany
Pointe du Penhir, Pointe du Van, Pont-Croix, Point l'Abbe, Quimper, Carnac etc

54. 18 Apr From Quimper to Vannes in a camper van
Quiberon, Morbihan, St Goustan, Vannes, La Roche Bernard

55. 20 Apr Villandry, vegetables, volcanoes and Volvic
Loire Valley, Villandry, Néris-les-Bains, Châtelguyon, Gour de Tazenat, Auvergne, Volvic

56. 25 Apr Clermont-Ferrand and the Auvergne
Royat, Clermont-Ferrand, Puy de Dome, Mont-d'Or, Puy de Sancy

57. 27 Apr From the Auvergne into Provence
St. Nectaire, Issoire, Montelimar, Orange, Luberon, Aix-en-Provence, Le Tholonet

58. 1 May Marcel Pagnol country and the Cote d'Azur
Allauch, La Treille, St Tropez, St. Maxime, Cannes

59. 5 May Menton – Not taking it on the chin!
Vallauris, Antibes, Monaco, Menton

60. 8 May Pisa and Lucca
Diano Marina, Pisa, Lucca

61. 11 May Fiesole and Florence

62. 15 May Faenza, Ravenna and Comacchio
Apennines, Faenza, Ravenna, Comacchio

63. 17 May Venice and Padua

64. 21 May Into Austria
Gemona del Friuli, Laghi di Fusine, Podkoren, Slovenia, Klagenfurt

65. 24 May Graz

66. 28 May Keszthely and Lake Balaton
Sümeg, Keszthely, Heviz

67. 1 Jun Pécs and library friends

68. 4 Jun On to Debrecen
Nagynarad, Mohács, Kiskunfélegyháza, Hortobágy region, Debrecen

69. 7 Jun The horsemen of the Puszta
Hortobagy

70. 10 Jun Tokaj, Eger, Visegrad and Esztergom

71. 14 Jun Szentendre and Budapest

72. 19 Jun With friends in Györ and Gyömöre
Gyömöre, Tét, Györ, Bakonygyirót, Pápa

73. 22 Jun Around Lake Fertö and Sopron
Fertöd, Hegykö, Esterházy, Nagycenk, Lake Fertö, Sopron

74. 26 Jun Tales from the Vienna Woods
Vienna

75. 28 Jun Salzburg and Mondsee
Nussdorf am Attersee, Mondsee, Salzburg

76. 1 Jul Berchtesgaden and Königssee

77. 3 Jul Rohrbach Landshut and Ingolstadt
Landshut, Rohrbach, Wolnzach, Ingolstadt

78. 6 Jul Furth im Wald and an encounter with dragons
Furth im Wald

79. 9 Jul This year in Marienbad
Schönsee, Bärnau, Marienbad

80. 11 Jul Meissen and Dresden
Freiberg, Meissen, Dresden

81. 14 Jul Saxon Alps and Oberlausitz
Moritzburg, Königstein, Jetrichovice, Seifhennersdorf, Lausche, Waltersdorf

82. 17 Jul Oi bin to Oybin
Zittau, Oybin, Zgorzelec, Görlitz, Niesky

83. 21 Jul From Prussia with love
Lübben, Potsdam, Berlin

84. 24 Jul Schleswig Holstein and Lübeck
Römnitz, Lübeck, Ratzeburg, Tremsbüttel, Büsum, Sankt Peter Ording,Friedrichstadt

85. 28 Jul North Friesland
Husum, Dagebüll, Niebüll, Föhr

86. 31 Jul Sylt and Flensburg
Sylt, Niebüll, Seebüll, Flensburg

87. 4 Aug Denmark - fairytales runes and Lego
Aabenraa, Vejen, Odense, Jelling, Silkeborg

88. 8 Aug North Jutland
Randers, Ertebølle, Naesby Dale, Vitskøl, Løgstør, Hirtshals, Skagen

89. 12 Aug From Danish Blue to Jarlsberg
Skagen, Frederikshavn, Strandby, Bangsbo, Sæby, Hjørring, Hirtshals

90. 16 Aug Kristiansand to Stavanger
Kristiansand, Mandal, Farsund, Flekkefjord, Egersund

91. 19 AugStavanger to Haugesund
Nærbo, Sandnes, Stavanger, Haugesund

92. 22 Aug Haugesund to Bergen
Haugesund, Lofthus, Odda, Sørfjorden,Kinsarvik

93. 25 Aug Bergen and the islands
Bergen, Holsnøy, Hundvin, Sævrøy

94. 29 Aug The end of a journey
Bergen, ferry to Newcastle

95. 15 Oct Postscript

96. 21 Oct A few facts and figures

A few facts and figures

2006-10-16T23:03:00.002+01:00

We have gathered together some practical information and statistics for anyone contemplating doing something similar to us once they have retired.

We bought Modestine second-hand about a year before we intended setting off on our travels. She is an R registration Romahome built onto a Citroën Berlingo chassis and she runs on diesel. She is taxed and insured as a car and classed as a micro-mobile home. We investigated thoroughly what vehicle would best suit our purpose and regularly trawled the internet until we discovered one for sale locally. This worked out considerably cheaper than purchasing from a dealer and delighted both us and her vendor Pat, who has been following Modestine's travels with great enthusiasm. Modestine has proved a very reliable travel companion, well insulated, comfortable, manoeuvrable, economic and easy to maintain. She has also proved to be highly attractive "eye candy" to the international motorhome fraternity, thus introducing us to many interesting people during our travels.

We took Modestine on several trips within Britain before setting off abroad, ensuring we fully understood how she functioned and how we could best survive in such a confined space. It is vital to appreciate the difficulties of living so completely together, totally reliant on each other. However well you may think you know your partner at home, after three wintry days and nights of incessant rain marooned on waterlogged campsites in a space 12ft by 5ft without room to stand fully upright, along with a couple of bikes, a computer and printer, all your bedding, clothes, shoes, maps and books, wet coats and umbrellas it is just possible you may feel an urge to throttle each other! We feel that overall we survived very well indeed. This may have been in part because of the mutual interest we had in developing our blogsite and would strongly recommend a shared hobby, be it blogging, photographing manhole covers – we call it "drain spotting" – or indeed train spotting! We were particularly fortunate in that we generally share many similar interests anyway and our skills complemented each other. Jill coped with the driving, shopping, cooking, laundry and blogging, while Ian concentrated on the serious issues like which cultural sites we would visit, marking the route we travelled on the road atlas in pink felt-tip and listing all the cartographic errors he encountered. He was also pretty neat at looking after the financial side, coping with the many different languages we encountered, editing our digital photos and finding open campsites in the depths of winter.

Over the past year we have stayed on hundreds of different campsites and every one has been different. Each has its own peculiarities. None are perfect – that's to say they are all imperfect. The only completely consistent thing about them all is that none of then have sink plugs. Take your own or buy one at a French street market at the first opportunity. They are simply a flat, flexible six-inch disk of rubber that fits any sink, anywhere. Better still, take at least three - we found clothes washing is much quicker using three different sinks for washing and rinsing. Many sites do have washing machines but travelling light means ensuring laundry does not accumulate. A washing line is really useful, not only for washing, but for airing bedding and to conserve a pitch if you drive off during the day.

To save space we did not take the chemical toilet. (An emergency champagne bucket came along for the ride but didn't earn its keep.) This meant that in general we needed to use campsites each evening but the security, hot showers, occasional companionship of fellow travellers, freedom to enjoy a glass of wine and access to electricity to prepare the blog far outweighed the economy of camping in car parks or lay-bys. Take your own toilet paper. Outside of Austria and Scandinavia you are unlikely to find it provided. If you discover any on the French sites you've won the jackpot! Almost all the European sites we used did provide free hot water and showers though. Take a good torch with rechargeable batteries so you can pick your way between the dog turds on dark winter nights on French campsites as you cross the icy field to the equally icy shower block. Rubber flip flops are the best footwear on campsites regardless of season. They can be left outside if encrusted with grass or worse and they halve the time it would normally take drying off after a shower. It is far warmer and more comfortable to dry your feet back in the campervan.

It is worth trying to obtain an international camping card. We didn't realise about this until we had left England when it was too late. There are sometimes considerable discounts on campsite fees, but the biggest advantage is that you do not have to hand over your passport as evidence and security when you check into a site, with the fear that you could drive off without it and be a hundred miles away before you realise! Campsite administrators, particularly in Portugal and Italy, insist they need passports for the police. Sometimes they will scan them and return them. We questioned this as our permission was not asked. We were told records are kept for seven years and it is a legal requirement for campsites to gather them. In the end, we got photocopies made, showed the campsites the originals but refused to leave them. In general the photocopies were accepted instead and returned when we left. In general too, the French police don't give a damn and we were rarely asked for any ID at campsites. In Scandinavia they don't ask for your passport but it is a requirement to belong to a camping organisation. We had to pay about £10 to join in Denmark before we could use any of the campsites. If we had held an international camping card we would probably have been exempted.

As for the discounts, sometimes we were given them anyway when we tried a bit of wheedling. Often there are campsite chains which allow a 10 or 15% discount after using the first one. This is common in Austria and Germany. Portugal is very cheap and all the sites we discovered were part of the same Orbitur chain, open all year and very basic, frequently without hot water or even loo seats but at 9 euros including electricity, very reasonable value. Hungary too is inexpensive but the sites are almost invariably attached to thermal spas, frequently with inclusive charges and inevitably crowded with unfit Germans sent by their doctors on expenses-paid health cures. The cheapest paying site we discovered was in Brittany where for 5 euros we had a basic pitch without hot water or showers but including electricity. The most expensive was in Fiesole, near Florence, where we paid 36 euros for not an enormous amount more. The most evil was 23 euros in Spain, near Valencia, which reeked and the water and electricity didn't work until Ian discovered enough Spanish to terrify the management. One of the cleanest, nicest and most friendly was at La Roche Bernard while the free pitches, hot showers, toilet paper and spotless facilities provided for campervans at Néris-les-Bains, stand out as quite amazing.

Don't forget a collection of electric plug adaptors for hotel rooms or rented accommodation, as well as cable connectors for European campsites. Take a fan heater for the winter and a small fan for the summer. Both will be required. Don't forget battery chargers for phones, torches and cameras.

Give yourself a treat occasionally if you are having continuous bad weather - find a cheap hotel. The room, however small, will seem enormous and the en-suite bathroom is wonderful for trampling clean and hanging to dry any accumulated laundry. You will appreciate the experience, believe us.

Fill a really large thermos with boiling water every morning. During the day it provides instant hot drinks as you travel and if you should inadvertently end up sleeping by the roadside you have immediate hot water for washing and shaving next morning.

Most countries sell phonecards for internal and international calls from both public and private telephones. Generally they are sold in post offices and are the cheapest, easiest way of phoning home. France in particular is really cheap and easy. Other countries vary but certainly we found them in Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany and Hungary.

Don't buy anything you don't need. Souvenirs are out! Even essential guidebooks and maps had to be jettisoned in the interest of saving space. As we did not know which countries we would be visiting we took a European road atlas and purchased national maps just before entering a country. Guide books are more of a problem though. We spent much of our time using Spanish and Portuguese guidebooks in French, and Hungarian, Danish and Norwegian ones in German. It was easier than trying to cope in the local language and English ones were not available. Tourist offices frequently provide cheap or free maps and guides to the locality in a range of languages.

Sort out direct debits for all your regular expenses before you go and try to have an email contact for your insurance company so you can sort out the mess they will inevitably make with your life, house and vehicle insurance policies while you are thousands of miles away riding wild horses on the Hungarian Puszta! We took copies of all important documents on a password protected cd in case of emergencies. Do remember to take your vehicle documentation. We forgot the document of ownership which we were asked for. Fortunately they did not understand English and we got away with showing the MOT certificate but you cannot rely on that!

We changed our bank account before we left and it has suited us in every way with interest on our current account, internet banking - so we always know exactly how much money we have – and a really useful perk, free cash withdrawals throughout every country we visited. We must have saved hundreds of pounds in bank charges over the year and the exchange rate was usually better than that offered locally. We never ceased to wonder at modern day travel where we would arrive in a country and simply go to a hole in a wall and walk away with a pocket full of notes in the local currency.

Of course the Euro in much of Europe makes this even easier and it is so simple to compare prices. Hungary and Portugal were amongst the cheapest, Austria was generally good value all round, as was Germany. Italy and Spain were generally quite expensive, Denmark more so and Norway was by far the most expensive for everything. Diesel is cheaper than petrol everywhere except Britain. With the exception of Gibraltar where diesel was 56 pence per litre, Spain was cheapest. Norway and Portugal were both quite expensive though slightly less than in Britain which seems the dearest in Europe.

Travel insurance can be difficult. Actually we found it impossible and we are still not convinced it is really needed anyway. Of course we had an excellent vehicle insurance policy with the Co-op which included unlimited Europe-wide assistance cover for the duration of the policy without time limitation outside the UK. This insurance has a number of useful features built in anyway, such as emergency accommodation and repatriation if the driver is incapacitated. (Particularly useful with only one driver.) We were aware that we were vulnerable as far as theft was concerned but carried little of major value and always tried to ensure Modestine was left in a safe place. That was one advantage of campsites over hotels where she would have been unattended on town streets overnight. We also tried to avoid sleeping rough by the roadside.

We left England with the E111 document giving reciprocal health cover in EU countries but it was phased out while we were away. Our difficulty was to obtain the European Health Card which replaced it when we were not resident in the UK and had no fixed address abroad. It ensures reciprocal health care throughout EU countries but you will need to check cover. Switzerland and Norway are slightly different and we did not go across to Morocco because we would not be covered there. In the event, we never needed medical attention so we cannot report on how effective the card is, but we met many people who have been travelling around Europe or living there unofficially with no other personal cover.

Before we set off we contacted dozens of travel insurance companies and brokers trying to get a policy that suited our needs. All the companies were fazed by our request. It seemed so normal to us that a retired couple should wish to travel around the countries of Europe for a year in a camping car, free to return to Britain as and when they wished. Britain is part of Europe anyway so we imagined a Europe wide policy would include Britain. No one, not even Saga or the Caravan Club, could provide anything suitable and all were expensive, automatically including cover we didn't need.

Policies, even over the internet, are only valid if taken out in the UK before departure. So we could not simply buy or renew online from France or Germany when our current policy expired. Annual travel insurance only permits trips for up to three or four months before returning to the UK. And it's no good lying about how long you have been gone. Big brother knows everything these days and you have to be able to prove what you say. We wanted an annual policy that would allow us to return whenever we wished rather than when our insurers dictated, and to stay in England for as long as we wished before returning to our travels. In the end we went with the 90 days left on our existing policy and then travelled with our fingers crossed until we returned in March. Then we took out an internet based policy for six months to cover the rest of our travels. However, this meant that we could not return temporarily to England for any reason as the policy would cancel immediately. We never needed it and with the European Health Card and our vehicle insurance we feel it probably wasn't worth having anyway, though it was of some psychological comfort.

Don't overlook renewing your UK road tax before you set off. It may well be possible to renew it online by now though. If you don't want to return to the UK for your vehicle's MOT make sure you have it done immediately before you leave. Such tests are just as efficient and a lot cheaper abroad but unfortunately they are not recognised once you return to Britain.

Carry only the credit cards you really need with you on the streets and make sure any others are well hidden. Split cards between you and if you have a joint account don't carry matching cards. If one is stolen, both will automatically be cancelled. Keep some travellers cheques and local currency hidden somewhere in case of emergency. (Remember where you hid it. We only discovered once we were back home but fortunately didn't need it.)

Always keep a really close eye on you possessions and don't assume people are honest. They probably are but it's not in your interest to assume so. It's easier to avoid a risk than sort out the mess once you have been robbed. Use a body belt and trousers with complicated zips to safeguard passports, wallets and documents in towns and cities – especially Barcelona and Florence.

Apart from our laptop computer (separately insured) we each took a USB stick, both for storing and downloading material from the internet in cybercafés and for uploading material to our blogsite. With these we could save and answer emails in Modestine to send on our next visit to a cybercafé. These are far more common in other countries and we rarely had to search for long before finding one. We did though manage to pick up a virus on one of the sticks and transmit it to our laptop, a real nuisance when we could not link it to the internet to download updated virus protection.

A few statistics

During our 13 months travelling we drove 20,690 miles and covered an additional 960 miles or so on ferries as well as a number of train and bus journeys to and around Paris, Barcelona, Florence, Vienna, Lübeck, Berlin and other major cities.

There are 95 entries on our blogsite which amounts to 1,840 pages including the photos. We took 6,916 digital photos of which about 3,000 are included on our blogsite.

Modestine consumed 2,103 litres of diesel at a cost of £1,536, paid in a variety of currencies. On average we paid 76 pence per litre throughout Europe over the entire year. This means she was giving us nearly ten miles to the litre and costing less than eight pence per mile for fuel. We feel this represents astonishing value for a car that was also our kitchen, bedroom, dining room, office, library and mobile bike shed!

Total maintenance and repairs for Modestine were around £1,100 while major ferry crossings cost £750. Other fares for rail, urban transport and short ferry crossings worked out at about £400

Our total accommodation costs were about £5,000 averaging out at around £14 per night. Hotels cost more while staying with friends and nights spent away from camp sites were free. Campsites ranged between £8 and £20 per night and renting worked out around £400 per month.

Living costs, including food, eating out and replacement shoes and clothes, cost about £4,300 plus another £400 for wine.

Cultural activities, entry to museums, galleries and concerts amounted to £500 while guidebooks, maps and other miscellaneous items were about £250.

Finally loading our travel account onto our website and downloading emails cost around £300. This isn't counting the fact that we needed electric hookup each night to prepare it but that cost is catered for with the campsite fees.

So our wonderful adventure, from 10th August 2005 to 2nd September 2006 cost a grand total of £14,514.50p. When you think how much it costs for two people simply to live in their own home in England for 13 months, we reckon this was pretty good value for money. It obviously does not include the cost of purchasing Modestine but does include the cost of returning to England in March and the cost of her MOT. It includes absolutely everything we spent, even our wine, entertainment, museum charges, frivolous treats, ferries, funiculars and other public transport.

Postscript

2006-10-15T21:50:00.000+01:00

Sunday,15th October 2006, Exeter
It is over a month now since we returned home to Exeter. Gradually we are readapting but it has been difficult to settle after so many months of stimulation living our nomadic existence on the byways of Europe. Already our illustrated travel account is giving us so much pleasure as we remember what we were doing this time last year, vividly recalling amusing incidents, places visited and the people we have met.

Our route southwards after landing at Newcastle from Bergen proved what we already knew. Britain has as much to offer in its own way as the rest of Europe with a landscape as varied as the moorlands and bracken covered hillsides of Yorkshire and Cumbria, to the industrial towns of the Midlands, the rolling hills of Worcestershire , the level pastures of the Somerset wetlands and the early autumn hedgerows of Devon.

We found our home intact albeit with a rather overgrown garden and an excellent harvest of weeds. To begin with it felt strange living and sleeping in a house after so long cramped together in Modestine. Indeed, when we saw our cabin on the Fjordline ferry in Bergen, we must have been the first people ever to exclaim at how spacious it was! We are still losing things all over the house and for a couple of weeks Jill suffered from headaches and "burnout".

Almost immediately we have become reintegrated into our former lives but without the work element. There have been invitations to exhibitions, activities and civic events as well as opportunities to see friends and work colleagues who have been following our activities with such interest, perhaps sometimes tinged with a little envy. We have been quite overcome by the support and enthusiasm our travels have aroused in so many people. Already friends are asking "what now"? With us away, their working week has been lightened by our regular reports turning up on the computer screen. Indeed, it is a question we are asking ourselves. Soon we will want to be off again, though not in quite the same way and probably not for so long. Certainly we are keen to enjoy these few years of health to the full, though for the present we are happy to see friends and family and Ian is eager to take up the threads of earlier research to accompany us on our next travels. Meanwhile, Modestine stands on our drive, eager to be off with us again, whenever and wherever we decide to go.

Last week we returned suddenly, unexpectedly and briefly to France. It was not a happy occasion. Jill's friend Danielle in Brittany, frequently mentioned in our blog, finally succumbed to the breast cancer from which she has suffered over the past year. Last April when we visited her we had been naively optimistic that she was in remission, but it was not to be. When Jill first arrived in the Jura at the age of seventeen to work as an English assistant at Champagne-sur-Loue it was Danielle who, without a word of English, immediately befriended her and helped her to speak and understand French. Since then she has remained a close, loyal friend. Her death has left us with a sense of great loss. Our sympathy is with her husband Joël and sons Stephane and Emmanuel.

At Salies de Béarn Ruth too, despite fighting bravely to the very last, has lost her battle against the brain tumour which attacked her almost as soon as she and Ralph retired and moved to their house in the Basque region of France. Throughout her tragic illness she was wonderfully cared for by the French doctors and nursed at home by Ralph who received much support from his French neighbours. Such tragedies bring out so much kindness in people. For both Ruth and Danielle the struggle has ended, but for Joël and Ralph the future is still hard to contemplate. As Ralph has said, "Our dream did not last very long really, but at least we had it".

This week Modestine took us down to the far tip of Cornwall to see our friends Pam and John, now in their eighties. We had promised to see them to report in person on the places we visited on their behalf in the Dordogne and the lakes of Austria. It was saddening to discover John confined to a hospital bed in Penzance and Pam alone for the first time in fifty years, unwell and housebound. Life can be so cruel and unpredictable.

We hope it is not completely selfish to wish to enjoy the health and happiness we are blessed with at present, by exploiting to the full every opportunity while we are able to do so. We know how lucky we have been but for anyone approaching retirement and in good health, think about what you really want from life and go for it. It need not be travelling as we have chosen - everyone has their own dream. The important thing is to decide what you want and actively strive for it. Whatever you decide to do, live every day to the full.

The end of a journey

2006-09-05T14:26:00.001+01:00

Tuesday 29th August 2006, Bergen, Norway
Today has turned out to be very enjoyable despite it starting with some poor soul in the gents' loo suffering chronic diarrhoea and vomiting. Such can be the hazards of campsites and this is not the most savoury we have used. Concerned at the thought of crossing the North Sea feeling sick we have become neurotic about hygiene avoiding the shower block as much as possible and doing all our washing up in Modestine rather than the communal kitchens.

We took the bus down into Bergen where, near the port we have discovered a parking area for camping cars complete with facilities. It costs the same as our present campsite but is walking distance from Bergen centre. From our present site the bus fare into town is dearer than the campsite fees. Sri Lanka and Hungary provide the cheapest public transport we have ever found while Bergen is undoubtedly the most expensive. We will move Modestine down into town tomorrow morning. The new site will also be really convenient for the ferry terminal on Thursday morning. Nearby we found an old wooden corner of the city with a bronze statue commemorating the Bergen Boys' Brigade. (We saw the home of one of its founders on Monday.) This particular organisation is apparently unique to Bergen and has existed for well over 100 years. Each area of the town used to have its own brigade and the boys would drill regularly with their bows and arrows. Now the numbers have diminished but several brigades still exist around the town.

Bergen Boys' Brigade statue and hall

Pretty residential corner of Bergen

Today we have visited the museum of the Norwegian fishing industry down on the quay near the ferry terminal. It was a fascinating little museum with some excellent large scale model fishing and sailing boats, fishing nets, tools and equipment, historic photographs and an enormous amount of information on the different types of fish and methods used for catching them.

Model fishing boats in the museum of the Norwegian fishing industry

The museum also included information on where the markets for Norwegian fish could be found around the world, how the fish was dried or salted and the social background of those involved in the industry until quite recent times. The exhibition appears to have been sponsored and housed by the Norwegian fish marketing company LeRöy who have their offices in the same building.

Logo of one of Norway's leading fish exporters
Included specially for our French friend Joël LeRoy who fishes the Breton coast for mackerel, crabs and lobsters

This had an unexpected advantage when we discovered the company's staff canteen where we were able to eat lunch at staff rates! So we enjoyed freshly cooked baked fish with salad, coleslaw and roasted potatoes for 25 NOK each! (about £2.15) Afterwards a cup of fresh filter coffee cost us 50 pence each! Rather better value than a £7 roll or £12 for fish and chips in the market! Anyone coming to Bergen, this is the place to eat! You don't even have to go round the museum but you'd be daft not to, it's so interesting. As retired folk we were only charged 10 NOK each to get in anyway!

Next we explored Håkon's Hall and the Rozenkrantz Tower where we were again offered very advantageous entry prices as retired people even though it was not advertised. It's always worth asking. Among the many wooden buildings in Bergen these two massive stone edifices stand out from their prominent position by the harbour. They reflect the period in mediaeval times when Bergen was the capital of Norway. Both were badly damaged when a German munitions ship moored nearby exploded in 1944 but have been carefully restored. Håkon's Hall was built by King Håkon Håkonsson between 1247 and 1261 as his palace, and the main hall is large and impressive. The undercroft is built directly into the uneven rock which in places emerges through the floor. The building reminded us of Dartington Hall in Devon, another mediaeval shell that has been fitted out with a timber roof, hung with beautiful modern tapestries and is used for concerts and other events.

Håkon's Hall, Bergen

Interior of Håkon's Hall

Perhaps more interesting, and certainly with much more to see, was the nearby Rozenkrantz Tower, a complex structure completed by the castle governor Erik Rozenkrantz in 1567 and incorporating two earlier defensive towers in a baffling maze of spiral staircases leading up to rooms with mullioned windows and massive stone fireplaces where the evidence of earlier floor levels was clearly visible in the walls. In one of the upper halls was a fascinating exhibition on the urban code of laws drawn up by King Magnus Lagobøte (the lawmaker) in the 1270s. Covering all aspects of shipping, town planning, theft and inheritance it drew both on earlier Norwegian codes and similar codes drawn up in southern Europe. It was particularly interesting to see from excavations in the Bryggen, Bergen's wooden waterfront buildings, how the code had been followed across the centuries, with regulation widths for streets and water cisterns provided by each building, as required by the code, to help fight fires.

At least one of those drawing up the code had studied law in Bologna, evidence of the wide intellectual, trading and cultural links of Norway in medieval times. Our own travels in Modestine fall into a more modest perspective compared with these earlier travellers. Finally we emerged on the roof of the tower, almost on the level with the top decks of the massive liner moored alongside, and with wonderful views over the harbour.

Rosenkrantz Tower, Bergen

View from the top of the Rozenkrantz Tower showing Håkon's Hall and ship of the Fjord Line fleet
From this quay we will soon be departing for home on a similar Fjord Line ferry

View from the top of the Rozenkrantz Tower back towards the city of Bergen

By now the thought of pancakes and coffee lured us to the marketplace, only to discover there was no sign of the stall we had found on Monday. Nearby though was the tourist information centre, worth a visit just to see the 1920s frescoes covering the internal walls of what used to be the mercantile exchange, depicting the fishing industry around Lofoten, north Norway where fish is prepared and dried on frames before being transported south to Bergen to be sold. Other walls show ships arriving in Bergen loaded with cereals from foreign ports, and the construction of modern ships in Norwegian shipyards.

Frescoes in the Bergen tourist information office

Walking through backstreets towards the bus station we found the public library, a surprisingly old fashioned place reminiscent of our early days working in Croydon Public Libraries, full of tall, dark wood shelving with a galleried main reading room. Here we used the internet briefly but there were queues of students waiting, so time was limited. In any case, our bus was nearly due.

At last! We've finally found some real Nordic walkers!

Thursday 31st August 2006, onboard Fjord Norway
We have been heading south along the Norwegian coast all day, threading our way between the hundreds of islands, calling at Haugesund during the afternoon. As we approached the harbour we could see our former campsite near the base of the monument to Harald Fairhair, who united Norway during the 9th century. Soon we will be approaching Stavanger, where we originally intended to board the ship before we got tempted into travelling on to Bergen. We are glad we did. It has given us the chance to experience so much of Norway's beautiful scenery - its coastline, islands, fjords, mountains, clear lakes and glaciers. We have also been able to see some of the country's typical wooden towns - old Stavanger, the back streets of Bergen as well as tiny isolated hamlets on the islands or along the edges of inland fjords. Today's journey has allowed us to see the length of the coastline from the sea without it costing anything as the fare back to Newcastle is the same wherever the journey commences. Norway is predominantly green, its banks covered in dark green fir trees right to the edge of the grey rocks that plunge down into the sea. Beaches do not seem to exist at all. Overhearing other passengers returning from the classic trip northwards from Bergen, through the fjords and round the North Cape to Kirkenes, the scenery continues very similar the entire way. It seems we have been fortunate to experience at least a part of what is reputed to be the world's most magnificent journey.

Looking back to Bergen

Offshore islands south of Bergen

Arriving at Haugesund
We arrive at Stavanger

A German submarine arrives at Stavanger

Since the 19th century the company of Hurtigruten has been trading between Bergen and the whalers, sealers and fishermen of the wilder and more remote parts of Norway right up into the Arctic Circle, running a regular service through the fjords and calling off at the islands to deliver grain, foodstuffs, medicines, tools and textiles to the islanders while collecting dried fish, cod liver oil, whale meat, animal skins and dried reindeer and elk flesh. It also carried passengers starting or returning from their travels through the port of Bergen. At some stage the company began to carry tourist passengers. It has now developed into a major tourist attraction carrying passengers for either a part of its total route, or up as far as Kirkenes and back again, calling off for a visit to the North Cape, and, depending on the season, a view of the Aurora Borealis or the midnight sun. Travellers are luxuriously accommodated on board ship and this must certainly be the most comfortable and convenient, if rather expensive, way of enjoying to the full the many splendours of this empty, lonely landscape.

Last night we slept in Modestine very near to the ferry terminal where we were kept awake for much of the night by the rain and the waves from passing ships slapping against the sea wall just feet from where we slept. We had no electricity so we are using that of the ferry company today to complete the events of our last day in mainland Europe which we spent around Bergen, visiting several of its museums, exhausting the last of our remaining kroner.

In the morning we visited the Hanseatic Museum housed in one of the old wooden buildings in Bryggen, the whole area being formerly the enclosed quarter of the German merchants. The Hanseatic League, with its headquarters in Lübeck, dominated trade in the northern seas from the 14th century until the 16th, and German influence in the northern outpost in Bergen lingered until the mid 18th century. The house with its heavy timbers was fitted out with many original features including the rows of bunks with sliding doors in which apprentices slept on straw mattresses. More senior staff actually had beds with hinged doors – even with pin-ups painted on the panels! It struck us that the traders of those days spent most of their life surrounded by timber beams – in their cabins on board ship, in their houses, even in their beds. There was some attempt at comfort with crudely painted decorations on the walls, portraits, and the odd piece of stylish furniture. There was also a passion for washing hands, with ewers, basins and roller towels in almost every room – very necessary when they spent so much time handling dried and salted fish, cod liver oil and pelts.

Stockfish being weighed, Hanseatic Museum, Bergen

Room in the Hanseatic Museum, Bergen

Bed with 18th century pin-up, Hanseatic Museum, Bergen

Life generally seems to have been hard and at the mercy of the sea. Ships from Lofoten, near the Arctic Circle, would deliver goods to Bergen and carry back necessities and more luxurious goods which had been received from Germany. Journeys south to Bergen could take anything from ten to 30 days and the journeys onward to Lübeck from 35 to 50 days. The small ships were often depicted on the seals of the towns with which the Hanseatic League traded.

Ships depicted on civic seals, Hanseatic Museum, Bergen

We were also able to visit the Schøtstuene, the Hanseatic assembly rooms. Because of the danger of fire in the wooden buildings of the Bryggen, cooked food was prepared and hot meals were taken communally in a separate building. Some of the dues paid to merchants on cargoes in the port at Bergen were actually used to subsidise their annual feasts. The men, who had to be unmarried while they remained in Bergen, ate together on benches at long tables and some of the proceedings must have been quite rowdy. We saw pinned to the walls, the strict regulations, with fines for contravention, which were drawn up to regulate life in the assembly room.

Schøtstuene or Hanseatic assembly rooms, Bergen

Interior of the Schøtstuene, Bergen

Communal kitchen in the Schøtstuene, Bergen

Later in the afternoon we made our way to the Museum of Fine Art where we visited a couple of the galleries, one, the Rasmus Meyer Collection, containing works solely by Norwegian artists, the other, Lysverket, showing how the work of some was influenced by changing trends in Europe, particularly France, at the end of the 19th century. The first gallery included many 19th century paintings of towns and landscapes by Johan Christian Dahl and of course works by the world renowned painter Edvard Munch. Both these artists amazed us by the complete change of style between their early and later works. Dahl started with works that seemed to our untrained eye rather flat, pleasant but with no sign that he was a particularly talented painter. Then quite suddenly there was a transition to exquisitely executed landscapes showing great skill, depth and use of colour.

19th century view of Bergen by J. C. Dahl

Munch on the other hand, started in his 20s with portraits showing complete realism and character. Suddenly, around 1900, his style changed with him producing canvases of bright solid colour influenced by Expressionism. Both were excellent but difficult to realise they were the work of the same artist. He was greatly influenced during his time in Paris by the works of the French Impressionists and this is also reflected in certain works where the colours are less dense and the outline far softer. It is interesting to note that he seemed capable of painting in completely different styles at the same period of his work.

Later, we crossed to the galleries of 20th century art where again there were examples of the work of both these artists. Here the flowing, impressionistic lines in Munch's paintings showed the development of his artistic style that lead to the searing anguish expressed so vividly in the Scream.

STOP PRESS… We are writing this in the lounge on the ship. The Norwegian news broadcaster on the overhead TV has just announced that Munch's world famous painting of the Scream which disappeared several years ago after being stolen from Oslo's art museum, has been recovered!!! Brilliant news and how strange that such news should reach us out on the North Sea as we write about the artist! We have verified our understanding with a member of the ship's crew who seems really delighted with the news.

The 20th century galleries also included several paintings by Miro and Picasso, including Picasso's 1960 depiction of the Bull Fight where the simple, vivid use of black and red caught Jill's attention across a room full of masterpieces.

Having spent most of the afternoon appreciating the zenith of Scandinavian culture, it ended with us experiencing its nadir when we investigated the inner depths of one of the tourist shops in the quayside. Here stuffed fluffy reindeer clutched tiny umbrellas (oh no, it looks like rain deer!), stuffed fluffy moose wore Scandinavian patterned woolly jumpers embroidered with "I love Norway", and large stuffed fluffy trolls sold for over £1,000 each." One of the trolls, realising we would soon be leaving Norway, asked Jill if he could have his photo taken with her wearing the new hat she's just bought. He assured us that the trolls of Scandinavia would always remember us with affection and though he was now too corpulent to pop down trollholes, some of his fellow trolls were already eagerly anticipating a cultural exchange with the pixies of Devon and might soon be seen popping up from beneath the manholes on Exeter quay.

Jill (right) with troll

As we made our way back to Modestine at the end of the day we passed a young girl of about 12 with her mum busy removing cigarette stubs from one of Bergen's decorative manhole covers and photographing it. They came from Russia and were delighted to see such wonderful street art. In Russia, the young girl explained in delightful English, they do not have such beautiful things. When we told her we had photos of about 60 that we have seen in different towns, her eyes grew large with wonder and envy! So we, and the director of the museum in Comachio, are not alone in this new-found obsession!

Tomorrow morning we arrive in Newcastle. Originally Belgium was on our list of countries to visit during our gap-year, to see Ian's sister and family in Brussels. However, before we got around to it, fate intervened and they moved back to England to live in Kendal. So we still have one more visit to make on our way south as we return to our home in Exeter.

And so our year in mainland Europe finally comes to an end. It is a year that has taken us to 17 different countries stretching from Portugal in the west to Hungary in the east and from Gibraltar in the south to Norway in the north. We have seen many old friends along the way and made several new ones. Throughout we have been supported by the interest of friends and family who, with a regular flow of emails, have ensured we never feel homesick. Modestine has behaved superbly suffering no more than a couple of punctures, two dud light bulbs and a burned-out glow plug.

We leave behind us a scattering of Ian's mislaid sunhats and a final message that says it all, written in the soft sand beside the boathouse on the furthest tip of Norway's island of Holsnøy.

Modestine, the end of a journey

Bergen and the islands

2006-08-30T11:18:00.001+01:00

Friday 25th August 2006, Bergen, Norway

More heritage in a manhole cover, Bergen
On each side of the design is a small inscription in Norwegian and English: Cultural city of Bergen

Bergen has very few camp sites for a town that attracts so many international tourists, so we are still at the same one. It's Ibsen's choice really! It is scruffy, there are no hooks in the showers which operate on a ten kroner coin with the coin box in the communal area serving both sexes. As Val commented in her recent email, one of the biggest delights about returning home will surely be having our own bathroom back!

There is a reasonable bus service down into the centre of Bergen from near the campsite. Unfortunately the twenty five minute ride costs £6 each return and takes in the out of town shopping centre and a two kilometre tunnel on the way - hardly the most auspicious approach to Norway's second city where the centre is on the Unesco World Heritage list.

The town is very agreeable, concentrated round the port where we checked out our route for catching the ferry home next week. The largest three-masted barque in the world and Norway's oldest square-rigged sailing ship is moored here, the Staadsrad Lehmkuhl, launched in 1914. It has won numerous first prizes in tall ships races.

Staadsrad Lehmkuh, Bergen

On the quay there is a busy market. It is actually the only one we have seen in Norway, unlike most of the other countries where they are very much a part of everyday life. This one exists almost exclusively for the tourists and centres on the fish market with stalls of dressed crab, smoked salmon, caviar, and cooked prawns as the main products for sale. To ensure Norwegian authenticity there are also dried fish stacked up and dried salted cod conveniently packaged for export.

Stall in the fish market, Bergen

Gaping jaws of dried fish, Bergen

Live crabs straight from the fjord, Bergen

Here fresh rolls filled with prawns, salad and crabmeat were selling like hot cakes at £7 each to visitors without a sufficiently large purse to afford the fish and chips on offer – a snip at £14 per portion! Norway is not the location for anyone on a budget.

Cheap end of the range eating place in Bergen

The market has a lively atmosphere with a range of other stalls selling goods typical of Norway. These include elaborately patterned thick woollen gloves, socks, scarves and jumpers in a huge range of colours and designs and ugly looking trolls with fluffy hair, huge noses and no teeth. They are Norway's answer to the garden gnome.

Norwegian knitted goods, Bergen

There are stalls selling local specialities like brown cheese, cloudberry jam, dried elk sausage and reindeer meat. We tried as many free samples of these as we could which helped the budget a bit. One stall which aroused a great deal of interest for two opposing reasons was the one selling animal pelts and seal skins. It was surprising how many people were stroking them and bargaining to buy a silky black sealskin or a reindeer pelt whilst others looked on with distaste, unable even to touch them. We definitely fell into the latter category. The sight of Arctic wolves pelts hung up by their back legs, their heads, tails and front legs left dangling, was truly horrid. That such beautiful creatures should suffer such indignity simply because of their skin shows just how primitive we still are. As part of a united Europe we can only hope legislation will eventually bring a stop to it all.

Seal skins, arctic fox furs, elk skins and wolf pelts for sale in Bergen

Behind the market are a number of large wooden warehouses. They are used as tourist shops selling woollen goods, clothing and glassware. It is surprising how easy it is to buy a wine glass here and how difficult it is to fill it! This is the area that is designated a World Heritage site. It is certainly attractive with its cobbled streets and huge, overhanging storeys, protecting the area below from the weather. The pinewood buildings are being gradually restored using traditional methods and tools. Nearby huge split timbers were stacked to dry and a sample section of timber showed how it was dovetailed to its neighbour to form walls and corner joints.

Bryggen, a Unesco world heritage site, Bergen

Back street in the Bryggen shopping complex, Bergen

Showing corner jointing, Bryggen, Bergen

Forked trunks generally form the support for overhanging storeys, Bryggen, Bergen

Concrete forms the support for overhanging storeys at the Art Museum, Bergen

We are back in the land of the Japanese tourists. They ask you to take their photo and then stand there making a two fingered sign at you while you do it! Why? What does it mean in Japan? Ian had to be forcefully restrained from turning the tables on them when he wanted to ask one of them to photograph us sticking up two fingers! We found a statue to the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull, and as with Strauss in Vienna, we had difficulty in finding a moment to take a photo between the Japanese queuing to pose with him.

Statue of the Norwegian musician Ole Bull, Bergen

For lunch we shared a prawn roll sitting on a fish trolley at the quay, along with many other tourists while the restaurants stood almost empty. We later discovered a stall selling pancakes with Norwegian fruit jam and cream which we ate with coffee in paper cups sitting on a nearby bench. Not the height of luxury but good fun and the cheapest meal in Bergen.

A walk around the town took us to some pleasant residential streets of wooden houses and up to a military installation which offered good views over the harbour and the town. We also discovered the museum of the Norwegian Resistance movement that gave us a little insight into the situation here during the war when it was under nazi occupation. It was not the best arranged museum we have visited but it was free, the staff were lovely and the toilets the best – the only ones – in Bergen.

Residential street above the port, Bergen

View over Bergen from the military fort at Sverresborg

We also discovered a wooden house that had been the home of the founder of the Buekorps in the 1850s. They were a Norwegian version of the Boys' Brigade and apparently part of their drill was to practice with crossbows! In the same house was born Armaur Hansen, who in 1873 discovered the micro-organism that causes leprosy thus leading to its control. There is a museum of leprosy in the former sanatorium here.

Birthplace of Armaur Hansen and home of the founder of Buekorps, Bergen

Bust of Armaur Hansen, Bergen

We have been surprised to discover now scruffy and dirty Bergen is. There are paper wrappers and cigarette ends lying around and places often seem grubby and neglected. After Denmark, where streets are spotless and there is an unbelievable number of immaculately clean public toilets everywhere you go, Norway comes as quite an unwelcome surprise. We have already mentioned that a charge is levied on drinks containers. People frequently don't bother to return them and they can often be seen lying in gutters or left in parks. There is an unofficial cleansing service in the town though, with ragged "down and outs" scavenging the streets and bins in search of enough containers to fill their plastic bags. These they then take to the barcode reader at the supermarket and get back a kroner for each one! Unfortunately, their bin searches often result in the rest of the contents being tipped around the street.

Searching for coke cans, Bergen

Bergen has a number of interesting museums but first one needs to see the city. So we have not yet visited anywhere properly. For £17 it is possible to buy a card for a day to see and do everything. However, it is physically impossible to do more than a fraction of them so it doesn't look very good value. At the tourist office we noticed a sign stating there was no more accommodation available in Bergen, listing the nearest places in the surroundings where rooms could still be found. They were even reduced to listing places in Voss, where we found ourselves yesterday – 99 kilometres away!

It started to rain as we returned to Modestine on the bus and has continued to rain all evening. We are thinking of exploring some of the islands to the north of the city tomorrow but campsites are very few though the scenery should be wonderful. That is where Norway excels. By land and sea the countryside is sublime. But what a difficult place in which to live from the viewpoint of climate and communication!

Saturday 26th August 2006, Hundvin on Lindås Peninsula, Norway
Today has been quite a contrast to yesterday. We left the campsite quite late having caught up on photos and prepared a new blog for uploading if the chance occurred. It has been a warm, bright, sunny day though both morning and evening get rather chilly now. We have decided to explore some of the many islands and headlands further north for a couple of days rather than continue on the Bergen campsite. We can return later ready to catch the ferry on Thursday. We are almost at the northernmost limit of our map of southern Norway and it only shows a couple of campsites on any of the islands we can conveniently reach. So first we travelled a short distance north of Bergen on the E39 – the same magic route we have followed for much of the way up from Kristiansand. This took us across the Nordhordland Bridge which, at 1,610metres in length, we are reliably informed is the world's longest pontoon bridge without lateral anchorage!

Nordhordland Bridge
Look! No lateral anchorage!

Once on the island of Holsnøy, with a total population of around 5,000, we stopped at the island's commercial centre in Frekhaug where the librarian allowed us free internet to load on our latest travel account. There is no campsite at all on the island but we explored to the furthest tip, some 25 kilometres further on anyway. Here we found what peace and tranquillity really are. The island simply narrowed away to nothing leaving us on a tiny jetty where the only sound was the lapping of the waves against the walls of a wooden boathouse. Nearby stood a pretty wooden house with a beautiful garden of dahlias and a vista of the sea - looking more like a lake with the tip of the next island just a short hop across the water. Looking at a map it is apparent just how ragged Norway's coastline is, but surprisingly, you are not particularly aware of this when driving along the islands until you are confronted by a dead end or a ferry. The landscape on the further end of Holsnøy consists mainly of heathland and pine forest surrounding a massive outcrop of rock. Tiny hamlets of wooden houses and a few farms are all there is to see. Nearer the mainland there is a golf course and meadowland with cattle and sheep.

Beehives in the heather of Holsnøy

House at the far tip of Holsnøy

Rural calm on Holsnøy

Boathouse at the furthest tip of Holsnøy

Returning to the bridge from Bergen we continued to the next island (Ian has just found a map covering further north and declares it isn't actually an island but is the Lindås peninsula with the most westerly point on the mainland of Norway nearby.) Here we found one of the only campsites anywhere in the area. It is really lovely with a farm, a lake, nice views and complete peace. We walked down to scratch the pigs behind the ears as they grunted in their mud patch, we stroked the rabbits and chatted with the goat. We sat watching a toad crawling around Modestine as we ate supper and have now moved inside as it is chilly and night is falling.

Pet pigs on the campsite at Hundvin

It has been a peaceful, relaxed day surrounded by beautiful scenery. It may be less dramatic than the icy peaks and deep lakes of inland Norway, but on the map it is obvious just what a curious terrain it is. Its very remoteness gives it peace and charm. Its woods of birch trees and pines, its heathers, rowan trees, wild raspberry bushes, its craggy boulders and towering rocks, its coves, tiny islets, fishing huts on the shore and boats rocking on the frighteningly deep, clear water all make it the perfect location to escape the international bustle of Bergen.

Ian has now discovered we are not a stone's throw from the world's most northerly beech forest! Who would have imagined so many superlatives would exist on a couple of tiny Norwegian islands!

Sunday 27th August 2006, Rågenes on Radøy Island, Norway
This morning began overcast but dry and we explored the remainder of the campsite which has several walks into the surrounding woodland. A round, grass-covered wooden building attracted our attention. The large wooden doors opened to reveal an interior with benches around the walls covered with furs. In the middle were further benches surrounding a central open hearth from which a copper chimney carried smoke out through the point of the roof. The whole was lit by candles and was presided over by the head and antlers of a stag. Such a building is known as a lavvo. This one was a copy of the traditional dwellings of the Sami or Laplanders, used no doubt only for cold-weather barbecues, but several hundred kilometres further north they are also used as sleeping quarters.

Lavvo at Hundvin
Interior of the lavvo at Hundvin

Before leaving the campsite Jill paid a visit to the lavvo

We walked through the gentle countryside of farms with herds of sheep browsing by wooden farmhouses in meadows between pine forests and rocky outcrops down to the harbour of Hundvin. The nature of the terrain means that there are very few settlements of any size in this part of the country, individual farms or small wooden hamlets are normal and the wooden church of Hundvin stood alone on a grassy height. At the peaceful harbour a rowing boat was setting out from the quay to fish the still waters of the fjord while we looked at the smaller fish that swarmed around the rocks by the shore.

Farmstead at Hundvin

Wooden church at Hundvin

Fishing at Hundvin

A thin mizzle started and we made our way back to Modestine, sheltering under trees when we could, leaving the campsite to drive to the north-east point of the peninsula with the idea of possibly catching the ferry at Leirvåg.

Although a ferry was unloading as we arrived we decided against it as it would have meant quite a long detour, so we contented ourselves with exploring the beautiful countryside of heathland and lakes with contorted and worn metamorphic rocks breaking up the landscape and peppering the offshore waters with innumerable tiny islands. The road wound through this scenery, which offered breathtaking perspectives at every turn, crossing from island to island on bridges until it eventually reached Sævrøy, where a ferry crosses to the island of Fedje.

The winding road out to Sævrøy

Beside the quay a family were angling. As we watched they landed a pollock which gave us the doubtful pleasure of watching it killed and cleaned in the water of the fjord, its entrails returned as bait for a future catch.

Inlet near Sævrøy

Scatter of islands near Sævrøy

Ferry preparing to dock at Sævrøy

The rain had stayed with us intermittently all day and we had eaten lunch inside Modestine, but now we braved the elements to walk along a quiet byroad amid this natural gigantic rockery, passing through cuttings which showed only too clearly the violent past of the earth in the twisted, contorted layers of rock, coiled and folded like plastacine. Bands of white quartz alternated with layers of black schist giving the appearance of zebra skin or a giant humbug!

Metamorphic contortions near Sævrøy

Fjord near Sævrøy

Rose bay willow herb near Sævrøy

With the island so narrow that the sea could be seen on either side, it still managed to find space for a long, deep lake covered in water lilies, a freshwater delight for a number of isolated ducks.

Freshwater lake near Sævrøy

We returned to Modestine and crossed onto the island of Radøy where we discovered our present campsite set above the Mangerfjorden. We have perched Modestine atop the highest grassy knoll in the campsite so that we can see over the roofs of the wooden huts to the islands in the fjord while staying snug from the rain which continues to beat down outside.

Despite the weather though, we have spent a very enjoyable and restful day, the rain showing the splendours of the landscape in a new mood which has its own charm. Distant silhouettes of hills are a hazy blue while the colours of the flowers, rocks and trees in the foreground are enhanced by the wet. The surfaces of the still, deep waters are pockmarked by the raindrops spreading ripples that brush gently against each other - quite mesmerising to watch.

Monday 27th August 2006, Bergen, Norway
Tonight we find ourselves back on the less than idyllic campsite on the outskirts of Bergen. We have been forced back here by the rain and lack of anywhere to camp out on the islands.

It rained continuously all night, a very comforting sound on the roof when you are snug inside Modestine, but rather dismal to wake up to next morning when you find the campsite waterlogged and you have to splosh through puddles to the communal facilities. This wasn't too bad actually as the season was over and the few people around were all staying in rented wooden cabins with grass growing on the roof. They had their own facilities which left the smart wooden toilet hut with under-floor heating just for us. It was chilly enough to appreciate the heating. It felt rather like a Swedish sauna in there after a shower.

The sea looked grey and dismal through the morning mist as we left the site, Modestine's wheels skidding in the mud. What does one do on a stunningly beautiful island on a wet Monday when there is nowhere to go and nowhere to park? There are no pull-offs from the road and in any case the terrain does not make for easy walking, rain or no rain. The only tourist attraction is the museum of the Norwegian knitting industry. Despite our sudden, burgeoning interest in the cottage industry of patterned woolly hat production, on arrival we discovered it to be closed on Mondays!

The Knarvik shopping complex boasts sixty shops and three cafés! It is just like a boring shopping complex in Wrexham or any other British town except that the prices are three times higher. We actually saw a kitchen rubbish bin for 1340 NOK! (About £120!) We did not notice anywhere selling wine and are left with the horrifying thought that possibly the island natives are reduced to travelling all the way to Bergen before they can buy a bottle of Corbières from the government controlled vinmonopolet for a minimum of £10 per bottle! We have never seen a country where everyone drinks so much Fanta and Coca Cola. Government control of wine is playing right into the hands of the soft drinks producers, and even where wine is available it is selected nationally so there is no real choice and no opportunity to try wines from small, independent producers.

Seeing the symbol for a special monument we turned in at a gateway, only to discover it was the national rhododendron collection, that we were the only people who had turned up all day and it was £4 each to look at rhododendrons that were not even in flower. So we gave the garden a miss in the rain and simply used the car park to prepare lunch.

We had no idea what we would be eating when we opened the tin, having seen it on the supermarket shelves and bought it for the label. So today we had Sodd for lunch! Later, in a bookshop where we sought shelter from the rain we discovered a Norwegian-English dictionary. It appears Sodd is a kind of meat stew with vegetables. We appreciate this explanation as the contents of the can were as anonymous and uninspiring as the Kjøttboller we had a few days ago. Both these cans appear to be popular brands on supermarket shelves and cost over £3 each! The everyday Norwegian diet seems the most uninspiring and expensive we have encountered anywhere! We are really looking forward to getting back to Britain so we can eat something other than frankfurters, potato salad, fish balls, sausagemeat balls and the contents of mystery tins with seductive labels that belie their contents.

Two silly sodds

In the supermarkets here most vegetables come individually sealed in a shrink-wrapped plastic condom. It came a complete revelation to Ian, used to eating courgettes from our own garden. He is now concerned that for years he has been thoughtlessly indulging in unprotected veg!

Maybe it is because we are mentally prepared for the end of our wonderful journey through Europe, maybe it is just that it has been raining incessantly throughout the day and there is nowhere to go out on the beautiful islands, but we have found the day has dragged rather and we would really like to be on our way home now instead of hanging around waiting for the ferry. We returned to this campsite this evening and will go into Bergen tomorrow, concentrating on galleries and museums. Unfortunately we find the city horrendously expensive to travel to, to visit the museums and to eat or drink.

By the way, we suspect some of you were slightly sceptical about the account of the troll holes on the streets of Randers back in Denmark. We have just discovered a photo we forgot to put on the blog back then. As you see, it shows one of the trolls actually popping up beneath our feet in the town! So, far from pulling the wool over your eyes, we were spinning a yarn as fine as any used in the production of Norwegian knitted goods!

Troll emerging from troll hole in Randers

Haugesund to Bergen

2006-08-26T12:29:00.001+01:00

Tuesday 22nd August 2006, Haugesund, Norway
We have the feeling that we are winding down. Today we lacked the energy to rush off sight-seeing so spent the morning catching up on minor domestic chores and updating items on our computer. Despite not connecting it directly to the internet during our travels it has contracted a couple of minor, irritating viruses through downloading infected emails onto our USB key. Fortunately it is still limping along so we hope it will last until we reach home and can update our antivirus software. The campsite here has wireless access so it was unfortunate that we dare not use it for fear of further trouble that could leave us without a working computer so near the end of our travels.

The sun has been warm and the view across the sea so lovely we sat outside for much of the morning making excuses not to move. After coffee and sandwiches we cycled Hinge and Bracket along the cliff-top track down into town. On the way we stopped to see the renowned local church. It was being restored and decorated so was closed to visitors. It looked like being closed for rather a long time to judge by the amount of hard work the painter was putting in! We almost stepped on him as he slept soundly on the grass, his radio beside him still blasting out Norwegian rap.

Painting the church, Haugesund

In Denmark Jill was allowed to seek out Elvis Presley. Here it was Ian's turn for some excitement as we searched the town for Marilyn Monroe. Apparently her grandparents came from Haugesund and relatives still live here. We found her sitting seductively on the quayside, Haugesund's answer to Copenhagen's little mermaid. She was always referred to as a dumb blonde. We can confirm this; we couldn't get a word out of her.

Marilyn Monroe 1926-1962, Haugesund

Nearby luxury yachts with such names as Husky Dane were moored. This week there is an important Scandinavian film festival taking place in the town and the glitzy and glamorous stars of Norwegian films were looking beautiful on the terrace of the smart conference centre on the banks of the quay. Here they sat with their chilled wine, being interviewed and filmed by critics and reporters. Since the heyday of Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo we were unaware that Scandinavia had any film stars. One sat apart from the rest wearing a lapel badge stating "I vånt to be alone!"

I vånt to be alone, Haugesund

After an otherwise uneventful afternoon we cycled back and went for a walk along the rocky sea shore overlooking the waters of the sound. The sunset this evening has been soft, the horizon suffused with gentle shades of blue grey cloud tinted with rose while the sea has shimmered silver around the many small islands that show black on its tranquil surface.

Two of the images depicted on the town's manhole cover, Haugesund

Sea shore near our campsite, Haugesund

Wednesday 23rd August 2006, Lofthus on the Sørfjorden, Norway
It would be so convenient to say nothing much has happened today. This evening Jill is feeling exhausted and writing this is a real effort, especially with one of the world's most lovely views to be glimpsed through Modestine's back door as I write. It is already late evening and we are camped high above the narrow fjord.

Camping at Lofthus

On the opposite side the mountains rise up, their rounded tops thatched with whisps of white cloud. At their base are scattered hamlets and isolated houses surrounded by fruit orchards and woodland. Higher up, the mountainside is clothed with firs while higher still there is the bare, grey-brown rock. Right at the top, frequently lost in the clouds, are the permanent ice fields, their glaciers looking rather dirty now as the ice at their terminal moraine dissolves into a ribbon of melt water that cascades down the rock face to the clear, deep salt waters of the fjord below.

Permanent ice field above the fjord near Lofthus

At this latitude, which is on a level with the Shetland Islands, it does not really get dark until about 10pm so, as we write at 9.30, there is a dusky haze over the water in the direction of the head of the fjord and, looking like a small toy, a solitary passenger cruise ship, its lights glowing through the gloaming, is slowly travelling away up the centre of the fjord towards Odda.

Dusk over Sørfjorden seen from our campsite, Lofthus

On this side of the fjord we are camping amidst orchards of apples and pears while slightly lower are plums and morello cherries. Certain trees here have yellow ribbons and from these campers can help themselves to free fruit. Down by the water this afternoon we bought containers of both plums and cherries which were left for sale beside the road with an honesty box for payment. Overlooked by glaciers, Norway is not the area one would associate with fruit production but everything we have tasted is really good. The season is so much later here. We were photographing trees of ripe cherries in Hungary a couple of months ago while the height of the season here has just arrived.

Apple orchard, Lofthus

In the apple orchard, Lofthus

There was a slight conflict of ideas this morning, Jill wanting to take the coastal route up to Bergen, using ferries and tunnels to cross the fjords, Ian wanting us to drive inland to pass up the sides of the fjords, beneath the glaciers. As you see, Ian won, but not without a struggle. As the driver Jill was scared of forcing Modestine up mountains on a narrow road where we might well encounter heavy lorries. She does not handle like a car, being considerably heavier. Besides, the route is at least three times longer, as any road atlas will show. We sought advice from the friendly man at our campsite in Haugesund who assured us it would be okay so long as we used gears rather than brakes. Well, we have coped with mountains in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Spain and Portugal over the year so why not Norway? After all, we have a set of Nordic walking poles to help give her some momentum up the steeper bits so she should manage.

Modestine equipped for Nordic driving

Actually, so far it has been one of the easiest mountaineering jobs we have done. There is only the one road round with a few roads leading off up into the mountains before petering out. There has too, been very little traffic and lots of places to pull off the road to admire the views. So the very worst fear, of driving along with a heavy lorry thundering behind and nowhere to pull off, has not been realised.

The route has been splendiferous all day. We have been in and out of more tunnels than we can remember. Some have been up to eight kilometres long. Although they have been fairly level and have only passed through the solid rock face rather than under water, it is quite awesome to realise you are four kilometres deep into the earth with not another vehicle to be seen ahead or behind. There are lay-bys every couple of kilometres in case of breakdowns but no hard shoulder. Nor could we see signs of ventilation but the air seemed perfectly fresh. The scenery wasn't up to much however so we were always pleased to see the sunshine as we emerged back into a world of waterfalls, lakes and fjords again.

We stopped mid morning for a break by Stordasvatnet, one of the mountain lakes, before continuing steeply down to the fjord below.

The lake at Stordasvatnet

The lake at Stordasvatnet

A family of swans on the lake at Stordasvatnet

Later, at Langfoss, a spectacular waterfall that tumbles down the rocks into the Åkrafjorden, we stopped for a picnic lunch. As our mobile larder has a rather eclectic mix of foodstuffs this seemed the perfect location to heat up a tin of Norwegian meat balls called Kjøttboller. They were horrid, swimming in brine and probably consisting of unmentionable bits of pig with lots of flour and very little else. Afterwards we "enjoyed" Jill's special treat from Ian for doing so much driving today. A whole bag of Skum Biler!! Would you believe kids enjoy eating sweets with a name like that?

Road along beside Åkrafjorden

Åkrafjorden from our picnic spot

Langfoss

We'd been warned at the campsite this morning that despite its magic location at the head of the Sørfjorden, Odda was an industrial town with a history of smelting and not very nice. Compared with British or Polish industrial towns it was spectacularly wonderful!

Odda

Remembering the smelting industry at Odda

Buarbreen glacier above Odda

View along the Sørfjorden from Odda

Modestine goes to Norway, Sørfjorden

We stopped for a stroll by the fjord and to read our email in the library before continuing to Lofthus where we knew there was a place to camp. Here we turned off the only route to anywhere, up a small road that climbed steeply up through orchards burdened with ripening apples, past pretty wooden rural houses with flowers around the doors, until the road ended here at this wonderful campsite with plenty of space for everyone to enjoy the fruit trees and stunning views. The facilities are possibly the best we have found in Norway and for this we are paying around £15 a night, which is amongst the cheapest. Compared with flying out from Britain and taking a cruise we reckon we are seeing Norway rather economically, even if we are reduced to eating Skum Biler and wine is hard to come by! (Seriously, we don't really need emergency food parcels flown out to us, as Roy emailed to suggest!)

In Britain back at the end of the 9th century we were forced to pay money to the Vikings to ensure they didn't raid our eastern coasts and carry off our Saxon maidens. This was known as Danegeld. We have now discovered that a similar levy is currently being paid by Norway to ensure that yachts filled with husky Danes do not land at Haugesund and forcefully abduct Marilyn Monroe from the quayside and carry her off to join their little mermaid in Copenhagen. In order to raise this tax, troll booths are stationed at the entrances to several of the tunnels and the more remote stretches of the routes around the fjords. Every driver passing one of these troll booths has to make a payment in Norwegian currency to the aged lady troll, known as a krone, on duty. It is for this reason that Norway has so far been unable to convert to the euro and continues to use the kroner. These krone trolls periodically load the Danegeld kroner onto a trolley bus and transfer it down to Bergen from where it is shipped directly across to Denmark, thus ensuring Marilyn Monroe stays safely on this of the Skagerrak. (The more observant reader may recall we recently bought ourselves a new supply of red wine.)

Thursday 24th August 2006, Bergen, Norway
We arrived on the outskirts of Bergen around 6pm this evening. From the map this campsite looked the most convenient for us to reach the ferry terminal next week without needing to drive through the centre of the city. What the map doesn't show, unfortunately, is that the site is as mediocre and inconvenient as last night's site was sublime. In particular the facilities are dirty and inadequate, we have been unable so far to find anywhere to get fresh water and the kitchen is crowded out with people from eastern Europe boiling up huge pieces of meat to avoid paying to use the electricity on their pitch.

Sorry, we seem to be turning into intolerant grumpy old Brits abroad! There seem to be several English people here and we have been chatting with a couple of school teachers from Doncaster who have the unenviable task of trying to teach teenagers French and German. They have told us we should try to take the train to Oslo before we come home. They have just come down from there and are thrilled with it as a city. We will probably stay here another night as we can catch a bus into Bergen, but then we will move on, hoping to find somewhere more agreeable.

The day has been rather mixed. This morning has been wonderful, starting with waking up to a view of the fjord with cloud-wrapped mountains on the far side. Above the clouds we could see the end of the glacier which today showed as a thick, turquoise sheet of ice as the sunlight passed through it.

View across the Sørfjorden from the campsite

Dragging ourselves away we drove down through the orchards to Lofthus on the shore of the fjord where the seaweed floated and swayed below the clear surface, an underwater garden where fish rather than birds flitted between the fronds. Loftus is a pleasant little hamlet with one wooden building that serves as supermarket, post-office, hardware store, haberdasher and everything else combined. Whether you need medicines, fishing reels, zip fasteners or sealing wax, this is the place to find it. Nearby we discovered a helicopter landing pad. This must provide a necessary lifeline to the outside world in case of illness or accident.

Lofthus on Sørfjorden

Wooden house in Lofthus

We continued along the side of the fjord, the road climbing up and down to negotiate the terrain, every turn opening up new, spectacular views of stunning beauty. Eventually we descended down into the very pleasant little town of Kinsarvik from where the ferry crosses to Kvanndal via Utne. Already we could see the ferry as it returned from its previous trip but there was just time to pop down to the jetty for a look at the fish farm where excited gulls screamed overhead as they tried to reach the fish in the huge underwater nets.

Jetty at Kinsarvik

Fish farm at Kinsarvik

Nearby was a lovely old church, the inside walls displaying some mediaeval frescoes including a particularly delightful pair of Norse devils.

Church at Kinsarvik

Fresco in the church at Kinsarvik

By this time the ferry was unloading and we had to run back to Modestine and drive her on board. The crossing took nearly an hour allowing us ample time to admire the ever changing scenery as we passed out of one fjord and into another. We were able to see the entrance into the famed Hardanger fjord and look back down the Sørfjorden towards last night's campsite, the lowest slopes of the mountains planted with apple orchards. This was the ordinary ferry but would also have made a fantastic fjord boat trip at a very reasonable price. Transporting both of us and Modestine through superb scenery for an hour and depositing us on a shore that cut hours off our journey and avoided a tortuous steep climb up the mountainside cost us about £15 in total!

Modestine crosses the fjord

Leaving Kinsarvik

View with ice fields from the ferry

View from the ferry

Arty photo of ship's wake

Apple orchards on the slopes of the fjord near Utne

Passing the ferry in the opposite direction

Approaching Kvanndal

View towards the Hardangerfjorden

View up the Eidfjorden

Once disembarked we made coffee by the water's edge and watched the ferry loading and departing before continuing towards Bergen. From here on it was less exciting. We continued to pass through beautiful scenery but after a while the wow factor fades a little. The road was narrow, there were countless tunnels, particularly as we neared Bergen, and many heavy lorries approaching on a twisting road. It was impossible to linger or take our eyes from the road. At Voss we stopped, expecting to find a pleasant little town to spend the night. It seemed a rather uninspiring place, its main claim to fame being that it is a centre for extreme sports. Within half an hour we were participating in extreme boredom so drove on hoping to find a campsite in the hills like last night. We found nothing and eventually ended up here in Bergen. At least the travelling is now behind us but tonight we both feel very tired and rather disappointed with the campsite.

The climb up from Kvanndal

Stavanger to Haugesund

2006-08-22T15:58:00.001+01:00

Saturday 19th August 2006, Stavanger, Norway
It was raining as we left the campsite this morning and continued along the almost deserted sea road towards Stavanger. This area has been partially cleared of the masses of rounded granite boulders, which have been used to construct dry stone walls, similar to those found on Dartmoor. It was our first sight of farming in Norway with fields of potatoes, carrots and cabbages to the landward side of the sea road and a jumble of rocks and boulders on the seaward side. The road runs along through a flat, sandy landscape with the line of the sea to our left. Beside the shore cattle wander amongst the boulders. There seems little enough there for them to eat. From time to time we would see a fishing croft, right on the shore. Constructed from granite and wood they have grass growing on the roof.

Fishing croft with grass on the roof, Norway

We turned inland at Nærbo to seek out what looked to be an interesting museum about iron. When we arrived we realised our Norwegian had tricked us just as our Danish had. It was in fact a museum of bygone days and anyway it wasn't open. However, we took a little walk in the rain beside a small river. With the granite stone walls, the wild autumn fruits, the rowan trees and the sound of sheep bleating, we could imagine ourselves already transported back to Devon. The mizzling rain only added to the atmosphere of home in a landscape far less dramatic than yesterday, but very lovely just the same.

Norway, not Devon! Nærbo

Drystone wall, still not Devon! Nærbo

We have discovered that drivers need to pay a toll to enter certain administrative areas. We pulled off to feed an unmanned machine with 13 kroner (c£1.20) and received a ticket valid for an hour. The machines do not give change so you need the exact money. Norwegian drivers simply drive through but they all seem to have a barcode fixed to their number plate and cameras operate at the toll points. We presume they pay periodically or that the charge is automatically deducted from their credit card.

We continued to the town of Sola. We were under the impression that it was a nice coastal town. In fact it is the main airport for Stavanger. It is a very dull and dreary place. Stopping for vegetables at a supermarket we noticed a lady feeding a recycling machine with returned bottles and drinks cans. We asked if we could watch and she explained how the system works. Every item purchased has a surcharge of one kroner added to the cost – i.e. your lager six-pack has six kroner added. When fed into the machine, a barcode scanner adds them all up and gives a receipt which you have to either spend in the store or queue up at the check-out for a refund. Our lady was due 35 kroner on her little lot.

Incidentally, as in so many countries, prices in supermarkets are marked e.g. 9.90 kroner as it sounds so much cheaper than 10. However, there is no small change available so the purchaser is obliged to pay above the actual price for a single item. This has already happened several times to us. It does not seem right that pricing can be so arranged as to make it impossible to give the correct change.

On the edge of the town we stopped for diesel as Modestine had last been fed right back in Denmark. Of course we had completely forgotten about our timed toll charge by now and it was only when the next barrier suddenly loomed we remembered and searched frantically for our ticket. We were lucky. We passed it under the scanner with about thirty seconds to spare or we would have needed to pay again! What a daft way of doing things! It's meant to control road use but if you are parked – for which there is generally a charge – you are not using the roads anyway! Furthermore, it must surely encourage drivers not to hang around, rather to get as far as possible within the hour. (Not that speeding seems a problem however.) Can you imagine how irritating it must be waiting around in a supermarket checkout queue and then having to pay again at the road toll before you can get home?

Disappointed with Sola we thought we'd see if Sandnes, on the outskirts of Stavanger was more exciting. It had to be, but only marginally. The centre is being redeveloped and new buildings are going up everywhere. It is really rather ugly and one of the largest and most dominant of these buildings is the government's liquor store. It probably handles as much money each day as do the various banks in the town. In a rather nicer pedestrianised area we found an Arab run food store. It was far busier than the supermarkets and was probably the most interesting shop we have seen since arriving in Norway. It sold hookah pipes, dried apricots, pancakes, woks and teabags amongst a gallimaufry of other unlikely items. It was fascinating to browse in and the prices the most reasonable we have seen.

Vinmonopolet, the largest establishment in dreary Sandnes

Nearby was a traditional wooden house open to visitors so we took a peep. Inside was an art exhibition organised by a Norwegian lady and her English partner. He was only too eager to talk with his fellow countrymen. He told us he had a place in Spain near Benedorm where he'd recently met Ingrid. He's sold up in England and had developed the habit of travelling the word, returning to Spain for the winter. He was here for three months helping Ingrid with her exhibition and had recently returned from six months in Australia. He also gave us a rundown on the world economy based on the cost of beer in different parts of the world. It is curious the many different ways people we have met over the year have treated retirement and the unexpected way their lives often work out. Ingrid assured us that prices here are amongst the highest anywhere but that salaries are also high to compensate. We are now trying to understand how Norway will be in a position to transfer to the euro when there appears to be something wrong with the level of the exchange rate between Norway and the rest of Europe.

Wooden house with art gallery, Sandnes

Around lunch time we reached the outskirts of Stavanger where there was a marathon in progress with traffic held up by the runners. (That will bring in a good few extra kroner at the next timed road toll!) We made our way to this campsite on the edge of a shallow lake, a cycle ride from the town centre. After a late lunch, as the rain had stopped, we left Modestine and cycled around the lake into the town centre.

History beneath our feet, Stavagner

Stavanger is built around its deep water harbour on the fjord and of course has the ferry terminal for crossings to Denmark and Britain. We spent an enjoyable couple of hours exploring the surrounding streets where people were sitting with their beers on the terraces in front of various bars and from the Irish pub came the very Celtic sound of folk music and fiddling. There are a couple of museums which look very interesting but they will wait for tomorrow. We visited the cathedral in a park beside an ornamental lake with a large fountain. Modest in scale its Romanesque style looked rather familiar. We later discovered that it had been constructed by English craftsmen under the influence of the Bishop of Winchester in the 12th century. The town rises steeply up from the harbour and all around new blocks of flats and businesses have been built. They are large and generally unattractive. Unfortunately they dominate the skyline from all around the town. The entire centre of the town is being redeveloped in preparation for its role as European Capital of Culture in 2008.

Former warehouses on the harbour, Stavanger

Harbour bridge, Stavanger

Cathedral, Stavanger

Norwegian national costume, Stavanger

Ornamental lake seen from the Cathedral, Stavanger

Colourfully painted wooden buildings, Stavanger

We cycled along the far side of the fjord to the ferry terminal in the hope of sorting out a ferry crossing to Newcastle. The office is shut until Monday though so it will have to wait. On the way back we chanced upon a gem. Steep cobbled streets formed a little maze of fishermen's cottages, all of traditional Norwegian wood construction, each with its own little garden filled with roses, nasturtiums and hollyhocks.

Flowery corner of old Stavanger

Apparently they were destined for demolition in the 1950s but somehow they were saved. Looking at the ugly blocks just above them on the hill, it is easy to see what would have replaced them and how near the town came to losing a unique and beautiful quarter.

At different points around Stavanger stand sandblasted iron statues of a man. Each is positioned at exactly the height of the head of the previous one, forming a broken column of 23 figures descending through the town to the harbour. The sculptures are a cast of the artist Antony Gormley, also responsible in Britain for the "Angel of the North" near Gateshead.

Antony Gormley pops in to a wooden McDonalds on his way to the harbour, Stavanger

Antony Gormley watches his Big Mac wrapper float across the harbour, Stavanger

Sunday 20th August 2006, Stavanger, Norway
Today has been relaxing and very enjoyable. After a leisurely start we cycled down into the town where there is a museum of the Norwegian fish canning industry we wanted to visit. It occupies a large 19th century wooden house above the cottages of old Stavanger and used to employ over 70 people, mainly occupied in processing and canning Norwegian brisling. These are really the same as sardines though the latter come from the Mediterranean and are larger than those found off the coast of Norway.

The museum produced its own tins, labels and packaging as well as processing the fish delivered to the factory in boxes of ice, straight from the fjords where they are caught between May and October. We found it all so intriguing we were there for nearly three hours. We were particularly fortunate that the explanatory boards were in both Norwegian and English.

Lid making machine at the canning factory, Stavanger

All this to make a key for a sardine tin! Stavanger

Sardines are hung in rows on skewers in a wooden frame and then then smoked for an hour before canning. Stavanger

Jill tries threading sardines, Stavanger

Sardines hung in a wood-fired oven to smoke, Stavanger

Decapitating machine once fish have been smoked and before packing, Stavanger
Fish heads used for fertilizer and animal feed

Packing of tins was done by hand at these benches, Stavanger

Soldering machine for fitting lids, Stavanger

Labelling and packaging machine, Stavanger
After canning tins are sterilised in an autoclave before passing through this final process

Norway has proved to be far too expensive for meals or drinks out, so we found somewhere to sit on the harbour beside a guarded German mine sweeper where we ate a frugal picnic we had managed to put together from our reserves in Modestine. At least we should come home slim and healthy after our two or three weeks in Norway! We were told quite definitely by the guard on the gangplank of the minesweeper that we could not go on board and have a look around so we cycled off around to the far side of the fjord up to the North Sea oil museum.

Norway really is a lead player in the oil stakes. Britain only relies on the country for 2 per cent of its supply but the rest of Europe imports up to 26 percent of its requirements from Norway. This museum really was absorbing, covering all aspects of the industry from how and why oil was to be found in the North Sea in the first place, the geological structure of the seabed, how to find likely sites to drill, and how the drilling was done. The rigs are vast structures and there are mock-ups of life on board, safety routines, coping with emergencies and disasters, a helicopter cabin simulating flight procedures between the rigs and the shore and much more. The museum included uses for oil and gas and products produced from them, including all kinds of plastics. The accompanying films left us with a sense of awe at the ingenuity and skill of scientists and technologists in taking on the might of the sea and the earth against unbelievable odds to ensure a regular flow of power and fuel to keep the world's industries and homes running. Pipelines run beneath the sea directly from Norway's off shore oil fields to terminals in mainland Europe such as Bremerhaven and Rotterdam

Engineer's model of a North Sea oil rig, Stavanger

Emergency life raft for a North Sea oil rig, Stavanger

Crumpled support from a collapsed oil rig, Stavanger
More than 100 people lost their lives in this disaster

North Sea oil has made Norway the largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. Such wealth means that living standards here are high and that would seem to be a possible explanation for the high wages and high prices we are so conscious of.

After two museums today we were feeling physically weary and mentally exhausted from absorbing so much fascinating information on subjects about which we knew so little. So we were grateful to sit in an internet place for an hour transmitting another blog, sorting out bank statements and other boring matters that still need attention when travelling, and reading our emails. On weekdays we try to use libraries as internet is generally free there for thirty minutes, but on a Sunday with a large amount of data to send we had to use a normal internet café. Like most things in Norway it seemed expensive costing around £5 an hour. We could almost have shared a glass of wine for that!

We were really hungry by the time we'd cycled back to Modestine. Our meals are becoming increasingly odd as we use up tins we have had for emergencies since we were in France, mixed with whatever we have bought in the Norwegian Coop here. Tomorrow looks like being fondue with lentils unless we can find a supermarket in the wilds of the countryside as we continue our travels north. The next day might well reduce us to prizing the lid off the tin of brisling Ian bought for emergencies at the canning museum – we still have half a packet of Danish crispbread somewhere to eat with it! It is difficult to create enjoyable, healthy meals requiring the minimum of preparation and cooking in Modestine when even bread is around £3 a loaf and so is a bottle of water if you are mad enough to buy it. We have survived okay on campsite water all year with no ill effects. In France we were spoilt for choice with all sorts of cooked menus to choose from and a whole range of charcuterie. Here such things are uncommon and expensive. A packet of frankfurter sausages cost us over £5! A basic takeaway McDonald burger would cost around £5.50.

So returning to Britain will have its compensations. The ferry to Newcastle is run by Fjord lines so we cannot even look forward longingly to crossing the North Sea with a plate piled high with chip butties and a brimming tankard of Boddingtons! Once we reach Newcastle we are heading straight for a plate of fish with mushy peas! To misquote a Geordie children's song - "we shall have a fishy on a little dishy when the boat comes in"!

Monday 21st August 2006, Haugesund, Norway
We have seen some wonderful scenery today as we drove up the E39 road that stretches from Kristiansand right up to Bergen. Can there be another road anywhere that takes in such a variety of stunning views? At Stavanger it turns into a motorway for a few miles before reverting to a lonely moorland road with very little traffic. It crosses bridges, disappears down tunnels and abandons you on the edge of fjord to take a ferry after which it continues on the other shore. At times the water laps at the road on either side, so slim is the narrow neck of land it occupies as it island-hops all the way up the coast.

Our journey today has taken us through several long tunnels that either cut through the mountainside or burrow beneath the waters of the fjords. Spectacular is not the way to describe the six kilometre long Byfjord tunnel that descends in darkness 223 metres down below the surface of the sea. It is the second deepest sea tunnel in the world. Awesome is the word to reflect our sensations as we drove down through this rugged, unlined tunnel, aware of the deep, silent waters of the fjord and the mass of granite rock above us. It is quite difficult to judge speed in a steep, dark tunnel with only the dim overhead lighting and the beam of oncoming vehicles to orientate by. Even the sound of the engine changes inside the rock but eventually we reached the bottom of the steep slope and started up the far side towards the surface. The light at the further end glowed for several kilometres before we shot out into the sunshine for a few minutes, crossed the little island and disappeared back down again into another four kilometre tunnel!

Inauspicious entry into the Byfjord tunnel

Far sooner than we expected we found ourselves on the bankside at Mortavika from where a ferry carried the road across the water to Arsvågen on the island of Bokn. The ships were impressively large for an internal crossing and we drove on just as it was leaving. The crossing takes about 25 minutes and three ferries operate around the clock. We spent the crossing on the deck gazing at the beautiful and tranquil scenery as we passed little islands, heading for the heather-clad granite shore with nothing but a few sheep roaming the cliff tops and the one single road to carry traffic on northwards.

Typical scenery for much of the day

Landscape on Bokn

The ferry seen from Bokn

A short distance along the coast from the ferry we stopped to watch herons and cormorants fishing the deep clear waters of the fjord while just off shore there was a small commercial fish farm.

Fish farm on the Fjord at Arsvågen on the island of Bokn

Natural rockery on the island of Bokn

Further round at Kårstø we saw one of the largest gas refineries in Europe. Somehow it didn't look that huge standing isolated in such a wide and beautiful landscape. It rather reminded us of the oil refinery off the Pembrokeshire coast at Milford Haven.

Gas refinery at Kårstø

So our route continued, tunnels, scenery, bridges, more tunnels. Mid afternoon we found ourselves in Haugesund, the only town of any size along the thinly populated west coast between Stavanger and Bergen.

Scenes of importance around Haugesund depicted on its manhole covers

Here we parked Modestine near the ferry port intending to sort out a crossing home. Nearby were parked several Polish cars and on the port is an enormous ship-building hanger. Gdansk shipbuilders would appear to be able to find work and good wages more easily in Norway than back in Poland.

Generally the port was deserted as no ships were due. We eventually found a battered door with a Fjord Line nameplate and an intercom. Stating our business the door swung open and we followed a maze of unprepossessing corridors and climbed several external aluminium staircases before finding a wooden shack-like building several floors above the ground. Inside however it was a perfectly modern office shared by the ferry company and the Danish consulate! We have now booked our crossing from Bergen on 31st August and our travels really are drawing to a close for a while.

We returned across the fjord that runs up into the heart of the town and parked for a preliminary exploration before finding a campsite for the evening. Our ferry crossing had turned out to be slightly cheaper than we had expected and with ten days still before the crossing we realised there was no way our wine supply would last out. So we searched the town until we found the Vinmonopolet. The shelves were full of wines from around the world at prices that almost made it cheaper to travel and buy your own from the supermarkets there! We are now though, the proud but bankrupt owners of a baginbox of Côtes du Rousillon which should keep us happy until we get home.

Returning through the town we saw a police car and a couple of policemen harassing two very scruffy, grey haired winos on a street bench, happily pickled with beer. How they afforded it and how they got it heaven knows, but they didn't keep it for long. Putting on a pair of black gloves one policeman confiscated the bottles while the other frisked them for any more hidden in their various saggy pockets. The police drove off with their haul leaving the two winos glumly mumbling on their bench before tottering off to investigate the contents of the nearest litter bin. Given the price of alcohol here we felt rather sorry for them. They must even have lost the various kroner due back on the confiscated bottles! We were just grateful the police didn't do a stop and search on us and discover our rucksack was full of Côtes du Rousillon!

Police make life miserable for a couple of down and outs in Haugesund

Around 6pm we found this campsite, beautifully sited overlooking the sea which is sprinkled with islets, several with lights that are now flashing through the darkness as an aid to shipping. Right nearby stands the national monument to Harold Hårfagre or Fairhair. He is credited with unifying Norway in 872 and is supposed to be buried on the hill behind the campsite shower block.

National monument to the unification of Norway on the cliff tops at Haugesund

Modestine gazes with respect at the tomb of Harold Fairhair

Very early Christian cross from around 1,000 AD we discovered on the cliff top

Kristiansand to Stavanger

2006-08-20T17:08:00.001+01:00

Wednesday 16th August 2006, Kristiansand, Norway
We have just finished cooking supper after a really lovely day in and around Kristiansand. We have found it to be a very agreeable town, bustling with life and full of interesting streets of wooden houses, public gardens filled with bright flowers and beautiful surroundings with magnificent views of the coast with its many rocky islands.

We cycled into the town this morning. It is not so convenient here as in Denmark, with fewer cycle paths and a great deal of energy required getting up the hills. We have become rather unfit after so long on the flat plains of Northern Europe and are easily puffed out on hills we would hardly have noticed this time last year! It will do us good to be back in a landscape that makes our legs and lungs ache again.

Kristiansand's heritage proudly reflected in its manhole covers

Kristiansand is a town built in wood. It surprised us but we find it very nice indeed. The buildings must take a lot of maintenance but most looked in good condition, painted mainly in white but also yellow, orange, rust and even a deep blue green. With their white wooden window frames they looked most attractive.

Typical wooden houses in the old town, Kristiansand

Typical wooden houses in the old town, Kristiansand

Many of the buildings in the centre however are built in stone and concrete. Exploring the older, wooden-built part of the town we discovered a Methodist church and went to explore, never having been in a wooden church before. It was closed but seeing us outside the minister, a friendly young man with excellent English, invited us inside, proudly telling us he was actually a minister in the Pentecostal church and had only just taken over this church from the Methodists who were still able to use it as they all co-operated with each other. He chatted for some time telling us of the immigration problems in the town, of the migrant workers from Poland, of the large Vietnamese community who used the Catholic Church and of the growing Islamic community who had a tiny room they used as a mosque that was far too small for the numbers using it. He showed us the interior of his church explaining that a wall had to be rebuilt in brick because the neighbouring property had a fireplace behind it and there was a serious risk of the church catching fire. He explained that originally the entire town was built from wood but about a hundred years ago a huge fire had wiped out nearly half the buildings and it had been forbidden to rebuild in wood. Knowing this we could see, as we walked around the town later, just where the limits of the fire had reached, with one side of a street built in stone and the other still in wood.

Wooden Methodist church, Kristiansand

At the internet café we were easily able to load on our latest blog. Sometimes we have enormous problems but today we were lucky. It cost us 30 kroner (just under £3) for the hour and the owner gave us a freshly brewed coffee each into the bargain.

Food prices in restaurants really are very expensive here so we went to one of the supermarkets to collate a picnic lunch. Here we found a counter selling assorted hot foods such as fish cakes, rissoles, pancake rolls etc. We didn't really know what they were but they looked interesting so we selected several to share. The lady there spoke charming English with a smile to match and explained what they all were. Mainly they seemed to be boiled fish dumplings with various seasonings. Some of them had also been fried.

We took them to one of the flowery squares and sat in the sunshine by a fountain where, helped by a large contingent of the sparrow population of the town, we tried them all out. They were rather stodgy but okay and remarkably filling. While there we saw several east European beggars playing accordions, much as we had done in Graz. This is obviously a popular destination for them as we saw none in Denmark or even Germany.

Nearby stood Kristiansand's cathedral, built in the 1880s with a stone exterior while the inside was constructed entirely in wood in the traditional style. It's not often one has the opportunity to enter a wooden cathedral! The style was very simple compared with the splendours we have experienced earlier in our travels, but we found the simple wooden roof, organ loft and columns most satisfying.

Cathedral, Kristiansand

Wooden interior of Cathedral, Kristiansand

Having enjoyed an inexpensive lunch we went for a coffee at a pleasant, ordinary self-service café. Our bill for a couple of coffees, a doughnut and a cream cake was over £10! It was a nice treat but we won't be doing that again! The shop also sold ice cream cornets. One scoop cost £2.30. One poor mum was buying one each for her three children! It must have been a special treat for being good we decided. Ian reckoned they must have been so good they were about to be canonised! In Germany we paid about 35 pence for the same quantity and even less in Hungary!

Children in both Denmark and Norway are beautiful. They are slim, sunbronzed with blond hair and blue eyes. They are well dressed and well behaved. They have open, friendly personalities and happy smiles. They grow up that way too. Everyone seems beautiful, well dressed and educated, friendly and happy.

It was such lovely weather, sunny but comfortable with a freshness to the air. We rejoined Hinge and Bracket and cycled off to Odderøya, one of the little islands in the sound, linked by a narrow bridge to the mainland. This was a pleasant place offering lovely views back to the town, or out over the sea to the many tree-covered islands and granite outcrops protruding above the water. Nobody else had ventured from the town centre on this midweek afternoon so it was a very peaceful place. We cycled, but mainly pushed, our bikes up the steep narrow road through the woodland strewn with huge granite boulders, until we came out at the top with spectacular views out to sea where the ferry from Denmark could be seen in the distance heading towards the town. This island had previously been under military control with gun emplacements, batteries and munitions stores, but had recently been opened up to the public in much the same way as at Devil's Point on the Tamar estuary in Devon, although here many of the emplacements are German. The area reminded us very much of the Devon coast, the sea a brilliant blue sparking through the trees as we climbed. At the top we lazed on the rocks eating wild raspberries and bilberries, reflecting, regretfully on how quickly our year had passed but grateful that we would be returning to a county as beautiful as Devon which at its best can hold its own even with this lovely area of southern Norway.

View from the batteries at Odderøya, Kristiansand

Hinge and Bracket admire the view from Odderøya, Kristiansand

Kristiansand from the batteries at Odderøya

Around 5pm we cycled down the steep slope in a fraction of the time it had taken us to climb up there, and returned to the town where we shopped for essentials – eggs, vegetables, coffee and bread before cycling the few kilometres back to our campsite. Here we realised we had been overcharged last night. The campsite manager had charged us for a caravan and a car, having seen the back end of Modestine and not realised camping cars came that small. He immediately gave us a refund and even gave us free shower tokens into the bargain to make up for his error! We had been taken aback at the cost of the campsite last night so it was a relief to know it wasn't quite as bad as it seemed.

We cooked a proper supper with vegetables and potatoes. It's the first for ages as the weather is now cooler and we have left the land of cheap restaurants far behind. As we waited for it to cook we drank a glass of wine with our immediate neighbours. They are about our age, recently retired and from Denmark. They, like so many people we have met, are intrigued by Modestine. Currently they are using a tent and travelling only a few weeks at a time. They have "done" Britain from Lands End to John O'Groats and have travelled extensively in Ireland. They of course speak fluent English without even needing to know it for their work. As they said, everyone learns it automatically from infancy. Certainly we have noticed that even children's TV programmes are transmitted in English without being dubbed as they are in Germany, Spain and France. They also confirmed for us that Norwegian is so similar to Danish that people can understand each other with no problem. There is apparently more variation in dialect within Norway than between Norwegian and Danish! We haven't even noticed any difference and continue to read the signs everywhere, astonished at times that we cannot understand anything when people are speaking whereas it is often so easy to work out the written signs and notices we see around.

Thursday 17th August 2006, Egenes, near Flekkefjord, Norway
This country is superlatively beautiful. Slartibartfast really has done a first-class job of coastal design! How can one even consider that somewhere as dramatically beautiful as Norway might eventually fail to inspire the same sense of awe and wonder as on first acquaintance! We will describe what we saw today but once we have done that we suspect the following days will be a repetition of today - lakes, fjords, lakes, more fjords, lakes …

We left Kristiansand this morning along the North Sea route. Initially this follows the main road, which is very beautiful anyway, but soon it branches off towards the sea and follows the dramatic coastal route west and north, twisting its way through little hamlets, turning inland to negotiate the many fjords, circumnavigating inland lakes scoured out from the granite mass during the ice age to leave sheets of deep, dark clear water that plunge through the rock to what seems an awesome depth. Frequently we were driving along a narrow neck of land with a fjord on one side and a lake on the other. Without the map we would have found it difficult to know which was which. We had expected far more traffic. In general the narrow twisting lanes that wind their way through woods, rocks and water are very empty but therein lies the danger. Countless bends on narrow lanes with water to one side and rocks to the other can be quite tiring to cope with when intermittently an oncoming vehicle is unexpectedly encountered. Periodically our route took us back to the main road for a few kilometres before we branched off down towards the sea again. Our map is useful but after Ordnance Survey and Michelin, Ian finds many of the national maps of very inferior cartographic quality. If we missed a turning we risked ending up on a headland on the wrong side of a fjord with no way across.

Sky reflected in the lake, near Kristiansand

So our progress has been slow but the day has been quite magnificent. The sun has been comfortably warm and we have stopped countless times to wonder at the scenery. Around 11 am we parked near a lonely jetty on one of the fjords near Trende with a few fishing boats moored and settled on the boardwalk with mugs of coffee brewed in Modestine. Here we peered into the depths of the water at thousands of tiny fishes, swaying sea weed and pulsating jelly fish. Fascinating and beautiful as we found it, we were shocked at just how deep the clear water appeared to be beneath the wooden planks we were sitting on, just a few feet out from the shore. Paddling is definitely not a holiday activity in Norway! The sides just sink away, vertically down to a bottomless depth.

Fishes and seaweed in the fjord with cloud reflection

Everywhere today the rugged granite hills have loomed around us, their slopes dressed in pines, birches and rowans with their glowing berries. The leaves are already tinged with yellow and beside the roads, mixed with the purple heather there are myrtle bushes, raspberries, ripening blackberries and rosehips. Above, the blue sky is flecked with wisps of light clouds and where the road climbs steeply upwards towards the neck of a fjord, houses, farms and cattle enclosures lie amidst the woodland like tiny toys on the valley floor far below.

We stopped at Mandal on the Mannafjorden. This is a very pretty little town where every building is constructed in wood. Some are large and ornate while others are tiny cottages with flowers at the windows. All roads lead down to the water which can be glimpsed along the side streets from anywhere in the town. One of the most impressive buildings was the library, constructed from white painted wood but with a classic interior that belied its construction. The library was excellent and it offered free internet though using some unknown software that proved unable to cope with hotmail. The building stands in beautiful gardens on the water's edge and has to count as one of the most lovely settings for a library we have encountered anywhere.

Street of wooden houses in Mandal with the library on the right.

Main entrance to the library, Mandal

Library and its garden seen from the seafront, Mandal

Wooden cottages in a side street, Mandal

We bought a couple of plain bread rolls for later and a chicken roll to share for lunch. The bill was £6.80. Norway is perhaps the most expensive country we have visited, easily passing Denmark. Campsites average around £19 a night and diesel is about £1.00 a litre, which is way ahead of any other country we have visited during our travels. In Denmark, the next most expensive, it cost around 80 pence a litre.

View from the bridge at Jasund with boat houses

During the afternoon we stopped at Farsund, another attractive wooden town on the Lyngdalsfjorden where we strolled along the quays in the sunshine.

Door to the town hall, Farsund

View back towards Farsund across the Lyngdalsfjorden

View along the Lyngdalsfjorden

There must be as much water as land in Norway. Travelling is just a question of threading your way between the different waters and ensuring you don't get cut off by a wall of rock or a sheet of water. Around 5.30pm we saw a campsite run by a religious mission. The setting was beautiful, right beside the edge of a lake, silent and peaceful. There was nobody around however and we hesitated to set up camp and pay later as we couldn't understand the price guide on the door. It implied phenomenal costs but was probably quoting for hiring a chalet for a week rather than using your own vehicle for a night, but we were not sure. So we drove on a further 20 kilometres to the next site marked on our map. Here there were road works and a new tunnel was being blasted through the mountain so we were diverted and never discovered the campsite. Eventually, on the outskirts of Flekkefjord we stopped and looked down into the valley where we saw some caravans. We found our way down here and have happily settled for the night after a very pleasant walk beside the lake or fjord – we've given up trying to work out which it might be but as it didn't taste salt we assume it is a lake.

View down onto our campsite at Egenes

This is only southern Norway. Maybe things are even bigger further north, maybe there are the wonders of the midnight sun, perpetual night, the aurora borealis, snowy mountains and breath-taking boat trips. This is however, quite magnificent enough for us. It is perhaps rather like several of Britain's most beautiful areas rolled into one and then made bigger. The granite mountains are rounded, weathered and shaped by ice, reminiscent of Scotland. The deep lakes, scoured out by ice remind us of the Lake District while the deep sea inlets and many wooded islands are rather like the inlets around south Devon. However, here it is the whole country and on a significantly grander scale. It is quite different from anything else we have experienced during our year and a stunning way to round it off.

Friday 18th August 2006, Brusand, near Egersund, Norway
We have a crisis! Before we left Germany we stocked up on wine as we understood it to be very expensive in Denmark. We found it for sale on the supermarket shelves there from around £3 per bottle. Relieved, we happily imbibed as we wrote about troll migration and ballroom dancing. Today we discovered our supply was running rather low so popped into the supermarket for another bottle. No wine on the shelves and not much beer either. With a sense of foreboding we searched the town until we discovered a back street shop run by Vinmonopolet, which appears to be a special division of the Norwegian civil service. Here the shelves were lined with serried ranks of alcohol ranging from hard spirits to cider. Even though Norway is now a member of the EU and presumably subject to the same laws of free trade within the community as the rest of us, the sale of all wines and spirits in the country is under government control. They cannot be purchased anywhere except these special shops where, needless to say, a hefty government tax is levied. So hefty is it that it costs more to purchase a bottle of Minervois, Corbières or Medoc to take home with you than it would to buy in an expensive restaurant in England! The cheapest we found, which didn't look very special, was £6 a bottle, average prices were more in the region of £10! Just to think we were almost bathing in it back in Ambre-les-Espagnolettes last autumn! Oh for five litres of Mme. Js. "super" straight from the vat!

Beer too is very expensive with an additional charge levied on every can sold to encourage their return to the shop of purchase when, if you can understand the Norwegian instructions on the special machine you are required to communicate with, you may get your kroner back again. Carlsberg beers from Denmark seem to have cornered most of the beer market up here. Is that what they mean by "reaching the parts other beers cannot reach"?

We are now rationing ourselves to make our last couple of litres last as long as possible. We have been thinking of staying in Norway until the end of August. We might be reduced to getting an earlier ferry to Newcastle and spending the last week until we get our house back on a campsite in Northumberland drinking Newcastle Brown instead!

Apart from that tale of woe the day has been rather good. This morning it felt like deep autumn on the campsite with the sun hidden behind the looming mountains of granite. Everywhere was damp and wet. Our windscreen was running water inside and out and it was too chilly to breakfast outside. We definitely feel the year has gone full circle since we started our big adventure. Soon though everywhere dried up and we were driving through sunshine beside the fjord down into the little town of Flekkefjord. This really is a pretty little town where almost every building is in white wood with huge baskets of pink and blue petunias hanging from their fronts. Even the octagonal church is in wood and has been sympathetically restored to its original appearance back in the 1830s.

Introducing Flekkefjord

Harbour at Flekkefjord

Octagonal wooden church at Flekkefjord

Interior of the octagonal wooden church at Flekkefjord

With more time and energy we could have spent a very interesting and healthy day
pedalling a tricycle made for two along 17 kilometres of railway track between Flekkefjord and Sira. The railway between these two towns closed in the 1980s but the track remained. Someone had the inspired idea of using the special bikes used by the track inspectors and designed to run on the rails, as a tourist attraction. These rusty, battered vehicles have metal flanged wheels that fit over the rails and masochists can hire them to pedal their way along through 17 tunnels on a single track railway line. Of course the speed is dictated by the slowest pedaller on the route and we still haven't worked out how people got back. Did they have to keep lifting their bikes off to let those coming up pass, and then fix them on again?

Railbikes, Flekkefjord

Exploring the old town – which claims to be Dutch in style but to us it looked very Norwegian and not the least bit Dutch – we discovered the wooden library on the very edge of the fjord. It is yetanother of the loveliest settings for a library we have seen and we went in to investigate further. The staff were really friendly and showed us around, pleased that English librarians were interested in their library. They showed Ian their microfilmed church records and local history room as well as giving us a tour of the rest of the building. The visit also provided an opportunity to check up on ferry times and prices. Depending on our progress and the weather we may return to England from Bergen rather than Stavanger. Our local history library friend Elizabeth of York has told us we have absolutely got to visit Bergen and we do try to do as we are told!

So called Dutch Town, Flekkefjord

Flekkefjord library

Who said librarians had no sense of humour? Notice in Flekkefjord library

We moved on up the coast. It was every bit as beautiful as yesterday and we stopped for a picnic lunch on a mossy rock under the shade of silver birch and rowan trees right on the edge of a deep lake where the rocks on which we sat plunged vertically down into the water, blue-green where the light shone, turning dark where the depth became even greater. On the opposite side of the lake massive, dark, bare granite rocks raised themselves high into the blue sky with here and there a huge boulder balanced on their rounded tops. Presumably these boulders have been there since they were left by the retreating ice caps but they look ready to topple down into the water at any moment.

Mountain lake west of Flekkefjord

Our route from here was magnificent. The route became increasingly narrow. Fortunately there was not much traffic as the road twisted its way around wall after wall of granite rock, struggling steeply up the side of Jøssingfjord to disappear suddenly into a long tunnel through the rock. Exiting beyond we found ourselves looking down onto the route we had just struggled so hard to climb.

Modestine drove through the tunnel seen on the rock face above Jøssingfjord!

Our road climbing through scree above Jøssingfjord!

Soon we reached the highest point and spread before us was a seemingly endless desert of gigantic, rounded granite summits. Now we twisted our way down, the rocks gradually rising around us with constant vistas of water.

Mountain lake at Åvendal with rowan trees

These lakes were at a high altitude but eventually we reached sea level again and followed the coast road around to Egersund. It was a little disappointing compared to Flekkefjord but pleasant enough with an attractive wooden church.

Church at Egersund

From here we moved on searching out a campsite. The landscape became lower near the coast and the boulders, rocks and hills less dramatic. Here we could have believed ourselves in northern England. Eventually even these eased away and we found ourselves following a flat coastal route through sand dunes! Here we have found a pleasant campsite for the night. It is run by Germans for Germans. They are very different from the Germans we met in Hungary who were mainly retired and sick, overweight with smoking problems. Here they are young, active, with families of happy children. They spend their holiday with shrimping nets in the rock pools at the sea's edge, beyond the sand dunes.

The sandy coast strikes us as more interesting here than in Denmark. The shoreline is sometimes a jumble of sculpted boulders, there are rock pools, little sheltered coves for mooring crabbing boats and the beach is littered with wooden lobster cages and fishing tackle. All the boulders here are large, shaped by the ice and the sea. Anything smaller has been transported by the ice sheets across the sea to lie on the beaches of Jutland.

From Danish Blue to Jarlsberg

2006-08-16T11:57:00.001+01:00

Saturday 12th August 2006, Jerup, Jutland Peninsula, Denmark
Modestine stands alone in the middle of an open field equidistant between the shower block and the village football pitch. The rain is streaming down and England is beginning to seem a very attractive prospect! We have discovered that there is not a great deal to do in Denmark on a wet weekend even in August.

This morning started pleasantly enough. Over breakfast Ian discovered from his map that there was a church near Skagen set amongst the dunes, that had been completely covered by sand during the 18th century. All that remains visible is the tower which has been maintained as a navigation aid. It proved a pleasant activity seeking it out on foot beyond a pine forest, lying amongst the sand and heather. From the top of the tower, reached by a couple of flights of narrow, rickety wooden steps, we had a view over the tree tops to the coast and the harbour at Skagen.

Path through the dunes to the buried church, Skagen

Tower of the buried church, Skagen

Closer investigaton of his map had convinced Ian that he could now find the elusive moving sand dune of Råbjerg Mile. By now the weather had clouded over and there seemed little else of comparable excitement so we set off to find it. When we did the parking area was crowded with Italian camper vans! Can you credit it! The wonders of Venice and the splendours of Ravenna have been forsaken and Italians have been streaming north to the tip of Jutland to see Denmark's moving sand dune! Shedding sandals as we went we ploughed our way across a huge incline of soft, silver sand that wisped along in clouds around our ankles, carried by the constant wind that blew across the summit. From the top we had an all round vista of the wide, white dune, the sea and the surrounding heath land and marram grass. A few hardy souls were flying kites but otherwise it was a deserted wasteland. After all our travels to the wonderful sights of Europe we are reduced to standing watching the sand move! There wasn't even a camel to relieve the monotony of the landscape! Jill thought it the most boring view anywhere whereas Ian said he thought it quite fascinating and was greatly impressed by it. There are a great many Italians and Danes who would support Ian's view rather than Jill's. Make your own decision. Is this the world's most boring photo or is it not?

Sand dune at Råbjerg Mile

Sand dune on the move, Råbjerg Mile

We continued to Frederikshavn on the shores of the Kattegat from where the ferries leave for Sweden. It has a populaton of 34,000 but today they were not in evidence. It is a more attractive town than Hirtshals on the Skaggerak but on a Saturday afternoon it is not exactly humming with excitement.

Main shopping area on a Saturday afternoon, Frederikshavn

Even the library was closed as were most of the shops! The foyer of the museum had an exhibition on Ex Libris bookplates from its collections which delighted Ian. Sand dunes and labels in one day! Just how exciting can Denmark get? Stay with us, there is more to come!

Exlibris collection, Frederikshavn

Musical bookplates from the Exlibris collection, Frederikshavn

The sky turned leaden as we walked the silent streets of the town centre and we rushed for the liveliest place in town – the ferry terminal! Here we sheltered with cups of coffee in the departure lounge until the rain eased. The tourist office suggested our best bet for internet access was the terminal hotel. Here we were quoted £8 an hour for access. An improvement on yesterday in Skagen where it was £12! (Except that we have discovered it is free in the library!) We declined the hotel's offer and eventually discovered an internet shop in a side street where we had an hour's use for £2.50. That was just about as exciting as a Saturday afternoon gets in Frederikshavn!

It does though have some of the most exciting manhole and troll hole covers we have yet seen in Denmark. Here, being a port, there is a serious immigration problem with Latvian trolls trying to smuggle their way into the Scandinavian countries via Sweden. The waters of the Kattegat and the port of Frederikshavn prove an easy access point for troll smuggling. No sooner do they land than they are hidden safely beneath the pavements of the town from where a network of tunnels takes then right across Denmark, passing beneath the Limfjorden to come up on the streets of Randers. From here of course it is perfectly easy for these illegal trolls to infiltrate the rest of Denmark. Even without identity papers many find easy troll work on the sand-moving night shift at Råbjerg Mile to ensure it keeps moving at the rate of 15 metres a year!

Manhole cover, Frederikshavn

Much small troll hole cover, Frederikshavn

Frederikshavn does not have a campsite within the town. Nobody seems to want to stay there. We are on one of the only two in the area, it is at least 10 miles away and we have the site to ourselves. On our way here we called off around 5.30pm to look at the port at Strandby. It looks a pleasant little working port full of fishing vessels and a few small quayside fish freezing companies.

Fishing boats in the harbour at Strandby

This weekend however the flags were out - hundreds of them. They all looked exactly the same. It has begun to dawn on us that the Danish flag must be red with a white cross. A flag of that description flies from every building of any importance in every town throughout the country. In Strandby today there was a harbourside funtime for all the local residents with exciting activities like tombola and a second hand market selling battered Moomin figures, chipped ashtrays saying "a present from Copenhagen" in Danish and lots of back issues of National Geographic. They were also selling drinks, ice creams, chips and hot dogs and to one side people were laying out the festive supper of curried rollmops, fried fish, fish cakes, rye bread and potato salad. Excitement was rising and activities looked set to continue well into the evening, possibly even until 8pm.

Loaves and fishes, Strandby

Attracted by the sound of rhythmic clapping and cheering we made our way to one of the large boat hangers. Here the entire village was crowded round while young boys and girls of around 11 or 12 years old danced quite unselfconsciously, smartly dressed in dark suits or long dresses with shawls. It was the final of the ballroom dancing championship and everyone was there to support them! The Danes definitely have their own concept of fun at a summer fete. Everyone was enjoying it greatly as they crowded round. We were reduced to finding a couple of chairs to stand on to see what it was all about. The Danes are quite tall as a nation and we felt quite dwarfed at the back of the crowd!

Come dancing, Strandby

Jill is invited to dance the lobster quadrille, Strandby

All this is not meant to sound unkind. We have not really spoken to enough Danish people to get under the skin of the country so can only make generalisations. As a nation they seem to have a lot in common with the British. Probably a Dane in Devon on a wet Saturday would find us an odd lot and marvel at our drum majorettes and scones and jam in a soggy tent. Certainly we found our interlude in Strandby entertaining. We would like to think though that there is something just a tad more exciting for people here sometimes.

Sunday 13th August 2006, Sæby, Jutland Peninsula, Denmark
How about synchronised chair folding? More about that later.

After a night of rain we woke to a grey and cloudy day. The campsite, which seemed so desolate when we arrived, turned out to be one of the nicest and cheapest we have used anywhere. After hot free showers we carried our breakfast things to a communal room, shared by the family and several cyclist who had slept in bunk bed dormitories inside the main building. Here Ian was able to watch Sunday morning cartoons on Danish TV with the kids while we ate our own food at pine tables with candles burning and a jug of coffee provided without charge as is so often the custom here. Above each table hung a low red enamelled lamp exactly like the one we used to have back in the 1970s that seemed so smart at the time and ended up in a jumble sale somewhere. Here that era of Danish design is still going strong. Incidentally, the Danes love candles. They are always lit on restaurant tables regardless of the time of day, even if you only want a coffee. Today we even discovered a couple in smart hanging containers alight in a public toilet! Which leads neatly on to the next comment. Denmark takes a real pride in its public facilities. Never have we seen a country with so many toilets and every one gleaming clean, nicely appointed with paper, soap and disposable hand towels. Driving through the countryside there are even lay-bys and picnic areas at frequent intervals with public facilities clearly advertised from the road. All are immaculate and clean. It makes it all the more strange that there is so much dog fouling here. It is nothing like as bad as southern France but far worse than other countries in Northern Europe.

Today we visited Bangsbo, to the south of Frederikshavn. It is a museum housed in a former manor house of the 17th century with a deer park and botanical gardens in the grounds. It was raining as we arrived and Modestine stood alone in the car park. Where is everyone in Denmark? This is an August Sunday and this is one of the main places of cultural interest in the area!

All alone at Bangsbo

The building was beautiful. Set in a large moat where ducks swim and willows bend to regard their reflections in the water, it has a timber frame and a thatched roof. Forming one wing of the building and housing the museum of carriages is the oldest barn in Denmark built in the 1580s.

Old farmhouse at Bangsbo, now a museum

Old barn at Bangsbo

Scapegoat, Bangsbo museum
Scapegoats were hung in houses to take on the troubles of an unquiet ghost

We spent several hours at the house as it contained a number of things we wished to discover, including a collection of documents, archives and memorabilia about Denmark's position during the Second World War. We knew very little about this and from what we have learnt it seems to have been a very uncomfortable episode for the Danish people. The country was invaded and occupied by Germany from 1940 to 1945. The army met with no resistance, the Danish government immediately surrendering to Germany. Initially Denmark co-operated and with the acquiescence of its government many young men joined the German forces fighting on the eastern front. Gradually however, encouraged and supported by Britain, a resistance movement developed which by 1943 began to achieve considerable success against the occupying German forces, particularly in the area of transport sabotage.

For the ordinary Danish people it was difficult to know what to think. There was little that they could do against the occupying power. Their government ordered them to obey the German occupiers who generally left them alone with little in the way of persecution as there was in other parts of Europe. It was not until 1943 that Germany turned its attention to Danish Jews and by then the Resistance movement had developed to such a degree that most Jews were able to be evacuated across to Sweden. After the war there were many recriminations amongst the Danes against those who had collaborated openly with the Germans. There were many business men and farmers who had actually done very well from the German occupation and become rich. In fact all this was rapidly lost later when German money was devalued and their savings became worthless.

Passive resistance was all many dared to show. One touch that amused us was a fashion for wearing crocheted berets in red, white and blue looking exactly like the markings on the RAF fighter planes that were carrying out regular raids in Denmark from bases in Norfolk and East Anglia.

Later in the afternoon we explored a network of German wartime bunkers on the cliff-tops above the town of Frederikshavn where a whole series of guns were trained on the waters of the Kattegat. These formed part of the "Atlantic Wall" constructed by the Germans against possible Allied attacks by sea. Over the years we have seen these bunkers as far south as Cap Ferret in Southern France, in the Channel Islands, along the coast of Brittany and Normandy and now right up into Denmark. There will presumably also be similar defences along the coast of Norway as it too was occupied. Most bunkers we have visited in Normandy have seen very active service and are battered and broken, their guns long since removed or rusted away. Here the bunkers were never attacked and they stand today much as they were when occupied by the German military. Their guns are still trained on the sea beyond Frederikshavn but today picnic tables are placed immediately beyond the muzzles and sheep graze the grass on the roofs of the bunkers. Inside they contain the original fitments with bunk beds for off duty use, cupboards for personal possessions, radio control rooms, radar equipment – we had not realised Germans used radar, and command rooms with long tables for debriefing sessions. The rooms are constructed from 2 metre thick reinforced concrete with huge iron doors, ventilation shafts and gun turrets. They were definitely designed for functionality and strength and are as hideously ugly today as they ever were despite the best efforts of nature to mask them externally with brambles and wild plants.

Frederikshavn seen from the bunkers

One of the bunkers on the cliffs overlooking Frederikshavn

Inside one of the bunkers on the cliffs overlooking Frederikshavn

Bangsbo museum had a very mixed collection of exhibits ranging from the largest collection of objects made from human hair in Europe to the remains of a Viking ship dating from 1163. More than half of the original timber of this remain and have been positioned in their original location within an iron supporting frame to show the shape of the whole ship. It was discovered in a nearby river estuary in the 1950s and is very similar to those depicted in the Bayeux tapestry.

Watch chains made from human hair, Bangsbo museum

Mittens knitted from human hair, Bangsbo museum

Remains of a Viking ship, Bangsbo museum

So one way and another the day passed and we hadn't yet visited Sæby, which we expected to have done by lunch time before continuing on to Aalborg during the afternoon. We abandoned that plan and simply made our way to Sæby, on the coast a short way south of Frederikshavn.

Sæby

It has proved to be as pleasant as we anticipated. In the 19th century it attracted writers much as Skagen attracted painters. We discovered a rather incomprehensible exhibition on the Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen who wrote "Woman from the Sea" here around 1887. He was attracted to Sæby – if we have unravelled the Danish text correctly – following the suicide at the age of 21 of a female writer from the town. Her life and the events of her death in 1883 formed the basis for this work. On the harbour stands a large statue representing his "Woman from the Sea" and in a very pretty little street in the town we discovered the home of the tragic young writer looking very peaceful with its yellow rendered walls and hollyhocks around the door.

Harbour, Sæby

On the street where she lived, Sæby

The sound of a brass band playing attracted us to the very pretty public gardens where a marquee had been set up, there were tables and benches set out and people were walking around in top hats and tails or long voile dresses and big flower-trimmed hats. At first we thought we had gate-crashed a wedding party but it was only Danes enjoying themselves in a rather charming and old fashioned way on a Sunday afternoon. Once the brass band stopped a group of fiddlers took over and people in their decorous fancy dress danced in genteel fashion on the lawn. Meanwhile salads were being served with glasses of wine and groups were sitting at tables listening to the music. We bought a couple of coffees and sat by the entrance to the marquee to watch and listen. It was all delightfully pleasant. Even many of the young children were dressed in 19th century clothes while artists wearing straw boaters were painting at easels beside the rose bushes.

Artists at work, Sæby

Enjoying refreshments, Sæby

Danish disco, Sæby

At this point it started to drizzle. People who had been sitting on their folding chairs listening to the music from the lawn rose as one and immediately began folding their chairs and popping them back into their long carrying bags. The women won this event easily, having the strings tied neatly on the bags while the men were still trying to work out which chair leg folded first and how does it fit into the bag with the arm rest sticking out like that. One family of four, all with red and white chairs to match the Danish flag, were so skilled it was fascinating just to watch and they all managed to finish together, quite oblivious to our admiring stares.

The rain decided us to move on. We found a campsite nearby where we have been given a pitch overlooking the sea. The wind is howling outside and the waves rushing in, capped with white horses. We are thankfully snug in Modestine and the rain is only squally and spasmodic. We hope it improved before Tuesday though as we have to cross to Norway and the North Sea may well be more windy than we are used to in the English Channel.

Monday 14th August 2006, Hirtshals, Jutland Peninsula, Denmark
We are at the campsite on the clifftops near the port waiting to catch the ferry to Kristiansand tomorrow lunchtime. There are more camping cars gathered here than we have seen throughout Jutland over recent days and they are presumably doing the same as us. Most are German or Italian. There are no other British vehicles here. We have only seen one other British car since we have been in Northern Demark. A German couple have just come to question us about Modestine. They have recently retired and are fascinated with the idea that we have spent a year travelling Europe in Modestine. They have suggested we sell her to them once we have returned home in a couple of weeks time! Ian has loyally assured them we would not sell her for her weight in gold!

As we write we are overlooking the North Sea and the waters of the Skaggerak. The air is calm and the evening light reflecting softly from the water. It is as peaceful here as it was rough last night. If it stays like this we should have a very pleasant crossing tomorrow.

We checked our email at the library this morning when we were visiting Hjørring, on the off chance of a reply to our email to Jill's cousin trying to make contact with the people we know here in Hirtshals. Alas, they are still on holiday and our chance has gone. This evening we walked the cliffs here and found ourselves looking closely at everyone we passed in case they happened to be Tina's family!

This morning we completely abandoned our tentative plan to visit Aalborg when we realised it would be a rushed affair if we were to be at Hirtshals this evening. Instead we contented ourselves with exploring the town of Hjørring just a short distance south east of Hirtshals.

Welcome to Hjørring

It proved to be a pleasant place with modern shops, nice houses, several parks, churches and museums but no real "pazzaz". Actually that is a reasonable summary of the whole of Denmark! We regret having to say so but it is the least stimulating country we have yet visited during our travels though it has one of the best standards of living. Everyone here appears to have a reasonable income and the education system seems good – certainly everyone we have spoken to speaks really excellent English and almost certainly German as well. There are no beggars, unemployment does not seem an issue, there are no disaffected young people on the streets and the walls are generally free from graffiti. Everywhere feels safe and secure, you are told when and where you are allowed to cross the road. There are very few bars around so people don't sit drinking during the day and it seems unlikely that there is a serious drugs problem here, despite having special containers in the toilets for the reception of needles and sharps. Denmark is a monarchy and there seems to be a very great affection for their royal family. Along with the Danish flag, their faces are seen everywhere. We have not seen a single EU flag while we have been here whereas in the rest of Europe they are generally more common than national flags –except during the World Cup.

As every follower of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will be aware, the fjords and coastline of Norway were designed by Slartibartfast. Presuming his cartographic labours to have finally been concluded Ian searched the bookshops of Hjørring for a map of Southern Norway. We now hope we will be able to find our way along the coast from Kristiansand to Stavanger without ending up at the wrong end of too many fjords. Norwegian is apparently very similar to Danish so we hope to muddle by with the phrasebook we already have. If they speak English there half as well as they do in Denmark we won't really need to use it anyway.

There are very few restaurants to be found in the towns of Northern Denmark and where they exist they are expensive and the menus rather boring, generally consisting of an open sandwich with salad, chicken or prawns and potato salad. So we bought overfilled rolls – also rather boring - containing Danish meatballs, salad, peas and grated carrot. These we ate in the park – what didn't fall out the ends of the rolls over the flowerbeds of marigolds and candytuft.

Having already seen most of the 160 statues and fountains of Hjørring, many of them very expressive, most of them granite, we decided to visit the museum. Usually we would not choose two local history museums on consecutive days but entertainment is limited when you are obliged to hang around a particular area waiting for a ferry crossing. It was an excellent museum but too similar to that of Bangsbo yesterday for us to become fully absorbed. It did though have the skeleton of the last person to be executed in the town back in 1822. He had poisoned his wife and ended up being beheaded and his skull publicly displayed on an iron spike. This is still sticking through his skull today!

There was also a special exhibition concerning a spinning top invented in the town in the 1950s which is still puzzling scientists today. Known as a tippi-toppi it has a habit of turning itself upside down as it spins. How's that for excitement? The real highlight of our visit though was the special exhibition of knitting! It is almost exclusively the work of one lady who had produced an unbelievably huge number of knitted cardies, gloves, scarves, hats, socks, bathing costumes, long johns, blanket squares and baby clothes in her lifetime. Many were rather worn, most were old fashioned, all were ugly and shapeless. Many were knitted with Fair Isle and Norwegian patterns and together they filled several rooms of the pretty former vicarage of Sindal which now stands in the grounds of the museum.

Sindal vicarage, Hjørring

At last we have found someone capable of out-knitting Ian's mum, a woolly blanket squares knitter of outstanding productivity! She would have been so impressed at the exhibition we saw today, so we would like the displays of assorted socks and squares illustrated here to stand as an affectionate tribute from us to her memory.

Knitted socks, Hjørring

Knitted cardigans, Hjørring

Assorted knit-nacks, Hjørring

Returning to Modestine we passed a shop specialising in Scandinavian design. Like the rest of Denmark they seemed to hark back to the 1960s. Indeed, everything about Denmark gives the impression that it has never left this era. Having discovered a new, contemporary design that led the world, why change? Denmark lingered in its old Habitats while the rest of the world moved on so far it has now come full-circle with designs from Ikea!

Scandinavian design "butik", Hjørring

After yet another day on our feet walking cobbled streets, Jill's ankle problem had returned so we left Hjørring, feeling we had seen most of what it had to offer, limped back to Modestine and made our way up here to Hirtshals.

Hirtshals' lighthouse seen from Modestine's window as we write

Tuesday 15th August 2006, Kristiansand, Norway
Hirtshals did not improve greatly on further acquaintance this morning. At least it wasn't raining but by the time we left the campsite there were only a couple of hours before we needed to report for check-in at the ferry terminal, so it was not worth visiting the North Sea Museum which apparently has a huge aquarium filled with cod and flounders. If it is like the one at Plymouth it would certainly merit more time than we had available so we decided to explore the town in more detail than we did last week in the rain. It is apparently a modern town having been established only in the 1920s, following the construction of the port which really remains as its be-all and end-all. There was little more to see and we contented ourselves with a stroll along the sandy beach, backed by sand dunes. Here at last Ian's fantasies were realised when a naked lady rushed out from the dunes to bounce happily in the shallow waves! Certainly that was the most Hirtshals was able to offer in the way of entertainment. We found ourselves reduced to wandering around the supermarkets to kill time until we could reasonably check in at the port.

Hirtshals' lighthouse, sand dunes and the beach

Ferry to Norway leaving Hirtshals, seen from the beach

So we have left Denmark without any great regret. In general, friendly as the Danes undoubtedly are, it not a particularly interesting country. Randers and Odense stand out as more stimulating than Jutland, and the Limfjorden was peaceful and beautiful. There have been some very pleasant moments but we have sometimes had to search for interesting incidents for the blog, whereas in most other countries we have visited this year we have been overwhelmed by them.

Farewell to Hirtshals and Denmark

The ferry is run by the Norwegian company Color Line. The one we travelled on today, King Christian IV, was not as luxuriously appointed as most of the Brittany Ferries ships we have used but it was considerably cheaper and quite adequate. The crossing took nearly five hours and was really smooth. We were informed that we could acquire some Norwegian currency at 3pm when the satellite would be overhead and our visa card would work on board! We are innocents where such matters are concerned and it seemed rather exciting to link to our Nationwide account while out on the North Sea approaching Norway! At least we didn't have to search for somewhere to park and a cash machine as soon as we had landed. We arrived around 6.15pm after passing between a series of small islands, the granite mainland looking far more hilly than the flat sandy coast of Denmark we had recently left. It is quite apparent now where all the granite boulders lying on the sandy beaches or set up in people's gardens, in parks and outside public buildings in Denmark come from. Our approach to Kristiansand harbour reminded us rather of entering Plymouth Sound and passing Drake's Island when returning on the Santander ferry. Here though the granite coastline was ridged and scoured during the Ice Age.

Jill on board the King Christian IV

Hello to Kristiansand and Norway

Granite coast approaching Kristiansand

Kristiansand is a town of about 80,000 people. We knew there was a campsite east of the town and made our way directly there passing through a series of long road tunnels to get out of the town. The site seems very nice with lovely views over the sound though it is more expensive even than Denmark, assuming Norwegian Kroners to be of the same value as the Danish ones. We feel comfortable on this site. It could be Devon really with the view of the sea, rocky islets, a jetty with boats moored and here on the site a jumble of large granite boulders, rowan trees with their red berries and wooded paths leading steeply up through pine trees. We will stay a couple of nights here to give us chance to explore the town tomorrow.

View from Modestine at our campsite near Kristiansand as our ferry returns to Denmark

North Jutland

2006-08-12T14:45:00.001+01:00

Tuesday 8th August 2006, Strandby, Jutland, Denmark
Randers turned out to be a very nice town indeed, full of architecturally interesting buildings ranging from the 17th century to the present day. Our search for Elvis certainly resulted in us spending a really pleasant day around the town and in addition we even tracked down the Elvis museum!

Introducing Randers

Town Hall, 1778, Randers
In 1930 it was transported on rollers 3 metres to the north of its original site

17th century house, Randers

Downstairs in "Elvis Unlimited" there is a shop selling back issues of fan club magazines, old Elvis records, photos, postcards and tee shirts. Upstairs is the museum of Elvis memorabilia and posters for his shows. It is the core collection from the Danish Elvis Presley Fan Club and even has a pair of his shoes – unfortunately not blue suede shoes, but white. As we explored the collection we were gently lulled by songs from his album Blue Hawaii. It was not well advertised in the town and we were almost the only visitors. Even Ian paid his 30 kroner for a look round. The best of the fun about it was that it had been collected so seriously by his Danish fans who would travel all over America to his concerts as evidenced by the many concert tickets and back-stage passes displayed in the exhibition. Sometimes Elvis would give their secretary one of his cast off sequined outfits and these would be worn by a club member at the next concert!

Proud memento for Elvis's Danish fans, Randers

Elvis's white suede shoes, Randers

Danish Elvis poster, Randers

Early Elvis publicity in Dutch, Randers

One happy fan, Randers

Having thoroughly enjoyed a morning of wallowing in nostalgia (well Jill had) we set off to explore the town. We were welcomed into the large, 15th century brick church of St. Martin by the elderly person on duty, who spoke excellent English though his deafness led to some interesting misunderstandings. This protestant church has a whitewashed interior and some very interesting monuments, paintings, chandeliers and carved wooden fixtures including a very impressive pulpit and a magnificent organ. It also has the oldest model ship to be found in any Danish church. It seems to be common practice here to commemorate ships, especially in coastal areas.

Church of St. Martin, Randers

Model ship dated 1632 in the church of St. Martin, Randers

The town's cultural centre houses the library, the art gallery and the museum as well as a smart restaurant with minimalist decoration in typical Danish style. Each table had a white cloth with a slim vase containing one poppy head. Crockery was plain white, chairs were very Scandinavian as were minimalist chrome light fittings. It was such a pity the aura of the room had to be destroyed by a couple of British pensioners who wanted coffees and rolls at one of the tables where white candles were burning brightly. Our snack lunch was nice but rather expensive. However, both the art gallery and the museum were free and an hour on the internet in the library cost us nothing.

Danish design in the Cultural Centre café, Randers

The art gallery contained both modern works and installations, most of which did not detain us for very long, and collections by local artists from the 19th century to date. These were more to our taste but the heat in the smart, Scandinavian building with its glass roof and large windows was quite unbearable. It could not have been pleasant for the staff working there. Why didn't the architect think through the whole thing when he designed the complex during a chilly Scandinavian winter?

Danish flag in Lego bricks, 20th century exhibit in the art gallery, Randers

The museum on the floor below was marginally cooler and we spent ages exploring the exhibits which ranged from 100 years of electricity in Randers, through to archaeological exhibits and ancient rune stones. There were interiors of old businesses and houses displayed, furnished as they would have been at the time. Generally these tended to be furnished in heavy dark wood, crowded and cluttered, very different from the smooth, clean lines and sense of space seen in contemporary Danish interiors.

19th century interior in the museum, Randers

The library in Randers was very smart, well stocked and with a number of innovative ideas including an automatic book sorting machine that classified the return books into order and arranged them ready for shelving by passing each book under a bar code scanner. The information required was all included in the bar code. Neat! All the staff spoke excellent English and explained how the sorter worked when we said we were English librarians.

Public library in the cultural centre, Randers

We were pretty exhausted by this time and it was really too hot for sight seeing. We walked down to the banks of the fjord where we found Randers' answer to the Eden project. This is a series of geodesic domes in which a tropical rainforest environment has been established. This must be a wonderful place to visit in the cold, dark, winter months but certainly not today.

We are very proud of our blossoming Danish. Once you start to crack a few words it is not so strange, frequently being rather like German or English. We read everything we see, guessing at the bits in between the words we can recognise. Sometimes this has funny results. Today we triumphantly turned up at what we thought was a spider museum, eager to see the large green pig spider. What could it be? We'd never heard of it. Neither had the museum staff. In fact it was a museum of Danish scouting and was full of toggles and woggles! Can't win them all! After that we decided not to take a wild guess at what the sign in the ladies wear shop meant by "Slutspurt." Sounds quite horrid!

Prettiest Slutspurt Ian's ever seen! Randers

Denmark is a land of trolls and Randers is a secret troll hotspot. They live underground and have small holes in the pavement through which they can reach to trip up passers by. Normally these holes are unnoticed and the trolls are rarely seen. However, if, like us, you are walking around searching for decorative manhole covers, you start to notice these little troll holes. They are not dissimilar in appearance to man holes but much smaller, just big enough for a corpulent little troll to squeeze his way out through. They are cheerful little chaps but as they don't tend to speak much English they shyly popped back underground when they saw us watching them.

Troll hole cover, Randers

Around 4pm we returned to Modestine and drove west and then north towards one of the campsites marked on our map. Denmark is really a collection of islands linked by bridges or narrow necks of land. Tonight we are at the southern end of the Limfjord, a huge stretch of water surrounded by tiny strips of land that hold back the waters of the Skagerrak to which it is linked by the tiniest of openings at Thyboren. It would be a very pretty area for a holiday but for us time is running out and we still have business in Norway to contend with. This campsite is not very busy at all. The lady here says the schools start back this week here! Strange when in England the holidays have not long started. Anyway that meant Jill had the swimming pool to herself and as nobody else was using the children's swings, slides, bouncy castle and climbing frame the campsite lady said it would be okay for us to play on them. The bouncy castle was particularly good but walking afterwards is not easy. After a game of mini-football where Jill won 6-2 we sat outside Modestine with a cold supper and glasses of wine until the sun set. Immediately though, the air cools down and it is quite chilly at night here. We have just been driven inside by the chill of the evening and the breeze from the fjord.

Wednesday 9th August 2006, Løkken, Jutland, Denmark
This evening finds us on the west coast nearing our destination of Hirtshals. We both feel very weary and surmise the cause to be the sea air. Gone is yesterday's heat and this evening there is even the odd spattering of rain. Actually we find this weather far more to our liking but being fairly flat the constant breeze blowing across the peninsula is very tiring. We are now on the most northerly of the islands that make up Denmark, a country of only five million people. We have been surprised at just how deserted the country is. It is sparsely populated, the roads are frequently empty and there is only a handful of towns of more than a few thousand inhabitants. We have now almost travelled the country from south to north. Since leaving Randers yesterday it has emptied out, leaving a land of ripe wheat fields waiting harvesting and a coastline of pale sand surrounded by a shimmer of bright sea. The light is very clear and bright and often the only activity to be seen is a cloud of dust from the harvesting machines as they cut an ever widening swathe around the fields, pouring grain from one end and chaff from the other. There are plantations of fir trees, and here and there areas of heath land with heathers, oak and beech trees, brambles and hawthorn bushes bent by the wind from the sea. The low sandy cliff tops are a riot of flowers even so late in the year with blue harebells, purple scabious and wild roses. Hedgerows are full of bright rosehips, crab apples, sloes and elderberries. Cattle graze right to the sea's edge, gulls soar on the constant wind and on the beaches there are signs warning visitors to avoid the young seals lying unprotected on the sand. We have been onto the beaches but have so far seen no seals.

Sandy clifftops at Ertebølle

Beach at Ertebølle showing granite boulders deposited during the Ice age

Cattle grazing on the clifftops at Ertebølle

Flowers on the clifftop at Ertebølle

Such was the landscape that greeted us this morning just a short distance from last night's campsite. There is here, as in other remote coastal extremes of the countries we have visited over the past year, a sense of quiet calm and timelessness. Here, as in Spain, Portugal and France, are the remains of Christian monasteries, remnants of an era when Christianity first reached the remote shores of Europe.

But here we have also seen many ancient burial mounds or tumuli. These are probably Bronze age as well as Viking. It could have been from these shores that the Vikings sailed on fishing expeditions and discovered Greenland. From here too they would have carried out their raids on the east coast of Britain. There is even a similarity in the feel of the landscape between northern Denmark and Northumbia both with their flat, sandy shores and remote fishing hamlets. Place names here show how the Danes influenced place names in England. Today we visited the peaceful wooded hollow of Naesby Dale leading down to the beach on the Limfjorden. Despite the name we have not popped back to Yorkshire for the day!

Limfjorden seen across the wheat fields from Naesby Dale

Naesby Dale

Villages tend to be streets of low, single storey cottages, colour-washed, usually in yellow. Sometimes they are thatched with crossed wooden pegs along the ridge to hold the thatch in place against the winds, almost like hair pins!

We stopped to explore the cloisters and the remains of the old Cistercian monastery at Vitskøl on the shores of the Limfjorden, the huge salt water area, almost like a lake, in and around which the islands of northern Denmark lie. Here, sheltered from the sea breezes by surrounding woodland we could explore not only the broken walls of the 12th century church, but also a beautifully laid out and tended herb garden filled with aromatic, flowering herbs. There were mint, lavender, tansy, camomile, sorrel, parsley, thyme, rosemary, feverfew, fennel, chives, basil and many more. They were laid out in different, walled area according to their uses – culinary, cosmetic or medicinal. They were further arranged according to traditional usage – circulation, nausea, headaches and nerves etc. It is surprising how many are familiar to many English gardens without us being generally aware that they have these useful properties.

Monastery at Vitskøl

Returning to the entrance we were offered free mugs of coffee in the sunshine. This seems to be a pleasant custom in Denmark. Often there are trays laid for visitors to museums and public buildings to help themselves to drinks. There did not even seem to be a box for voluntary donations.

We have generally pottered today, taking the interesting looking byways in preference to the more direct routes. Both the countryside and the climate feel very much like parts of England, be it the more remote areas of Cornwall, or Yorkshire or Northumbria. There are elements of them all here. It does though, also have very much a Scandinavian feel. The wide vistas of land and water, the clear light, the dark green of the pine trees and the undulating landscape with its soft sandy soil. Scattered, and almost venerated around the countryside, can be found large granite boulders. There have presumably been carried south from Norway during the ice age, rounded and shaped on the way and finally deposited here. They are used as grave stones and plaques or cut into shapes for public monuments. They are generally incised. Most inscriptions are modern but these granite boulders were also used for runic inscriptions over a thousand years ago!

Granite boulder shaped into a seal, Løgstør

During the afternoon we arrived at Løgstør on the edge of that part of the Limfjorden known as the Løgstør Bredning or Broad. This is a very pleasant, completely uncommercialised little town with a harbour and a canal. It gives the impression that it is there to supply the needs of the entire surrounding countryside of isolated little hamlets and that everyone drives onto Løgstør every couple of weeks to stock up on foodstuffs and clothing. In the library we were told we could have free access to the internet. This seems to be the policy in Danish libraries. We did not need to be residents or even library members. It is the most open country we have visited with regard to the internet. In Italy we had to sign forms and show our passports for police checks before we were allowed on and everywhere else has been charged for. When it seems Denmark is expensive because of restaurant and supermarket prices, it often balances out with free museums, internet and coffees! House prices here seem much lower than in England too.

Street in Løgstør

Løgstør canal
Carved tree in Løgstør

Leaving Løgstør we crossed the bridge that links Vendsyssel, the most northerly of Denmark's islands, to the rest of the country, and drove on for a couple of hours before deciding to find a campsite. There are many around here, nearly all on the beach. This not very pleasant here, being windy with sand blown up everywhere. There are beach huts and caravan parks and generally we didn't like it much. However, we have found a site for the night back from the sea sheltered by woods and far more pleasant.

Thursday 10th August 2006, Skagen, Jutland, Denmark
It is a year to the day since we left England at the start of our "gap year". At the time we did not know quite how the year would work out and neither of us envisaged that we would spend as much time travelling in Modestine as we have. As far as we had any plans they were to use France as a base and to travel out for a few weeks at a time from there. In fact we have done far more. Denmark is our 16th or 17th different country and we are not finished yet. Today we booked a ferry place to Kristiansand in Norway. It has been a wonderful, exciting and happy year, the opportunity of a lifetime, and as our blog confirms, a year where every day has brought new surprises and experiences. There's an exciting and fascinating world outside of work with so much still to look forward to. It will be good to see family and friends again a few weeks from now, and to return to our own home for a while. But settling back will not be easy. Although we will probably not travel like this again, we certainly hope to explore more of the world while we are fit and healthy. We have never been so healthy! Not once during the year have either of us suffered more than a slight cold or a bruised foot despite the questionable hygiene standards of living, sleeping, eating, blogging and driving in a tiny camping car in all weathers!

This morning we made directly for Hirtshals, the northernmost ferry port of Denmark. From here the ferries leave each day for destinations in Norway, Sweden and Iceland, but not England. So with the help of charming, blonde, young Lars Larsen (what else?) in the ferry terminal we have booked a crossing for next week to Norway and will drive around the coast to Stavanger where we understand we can get a ferry across to Newcastle. That's the plan. When we were staying with Anne and Ray in Rohrbach a few weeks ago, one of Anne's English students told us of her wonderful Norwegian holiday along this same stretch of coast so we thought we'd investigate it for ourselves.

After that flurry of excitement this morning we set about exploring Hirtshals. We actually have very tenuous connections with the town and were hoping for the opportunity to make contact with Jill's cousin's in-laws. However, we do not have their family name to search the phone book and all relatives in England who could help us seem to be away on holiday. So, here at what definitely feels like the end of a continent, we have walked around the streets half expecting to see a familiar face. In any case, even if we had the family name we wouldn't find them. There are five million inhabitants of Denmark and there only seems to be about five surnames! There appears to only be about five given names too. Of course they combine in various different ways but it still leaves an average of one million people for each of the five surnames in the phone books! The odds of finding the one you want in Hirtshals are not high!

The town is not exciting. We are reluctant to say so but actually it is all rather boring. There are parades of small modern shops, none of which looked interesting. There are a few cafés and pizzerias, all serving rather mundane, boring meals – pizza, spaghetti, chilli con carne and burgers. Prices for meals are generally not cheap and it definitely does not seem the custom to eat out here. A few imaginative granite statues relieved the boredom of the place slightly. For us as visitors it was okay but it cannot be a stimulating place to live. It is famed for the quality of its light which is appreciated by artists. Today it was raining steadily so we could not share this appreciation. The sea front is nothing but sand and dunes and generally the town appears to exist because of the importance of the ferry port. It is also the town with the most dog fouled pavements we have encountered since we left the south of France.

In its praise though, it has a very good public library with free internet access. It is a cheerful, lively place, very well used, well laid out and designed. Just what English librarians expect from Denmark

When we couldn't think of anything more to do in the rain in Hirtshals we decided to drive to the very furthest tip of Denmark, Skagen, some 40 kilometres further up the coast. It was pouring with rain all the way. Up here the northernmost tip narrows to little more than a sandspit with dunes to either side. It is the point where the North Sea meets the Baltic.

So few are the tourist opportunities that a moving sand dune is something to remark on in all the guide books! So bored were we that it actually sounded exciting! Wow! Let's go look at a sand dune and see if it moves! We've four whole days before our ferry crossing and it's moving at the rate of 15 metres a year! That's SO thrilling!

Believe it or not, we couldn't even find the wretched thing! How out of date is our guide book if it's moved on already? Maybe our hearts were not quite in it but we gave up searching fairly quickly.

Leaving Modestine in the mizzle amongst the dunes at the very tip of Denmark we strode off past struggling Nordic walkers and old wartime bunkers on the beach, out along the sands to the point where the waters of the Skagerrak on the North Sea meet those of the Kattegat on the Baltic. The waves come from different directions and converge at one specific point where a shallow ridge of sand has built up. It is thus possible to stand astride the ridge with a foot in each of the two waters.

Grenen sandspit and a wartime bunker seen from the dunes

Sand, sea, sky and solitude – well almost! Grenen

Right foot in the Skagerrak, left foot in the Kattegat, Jill at Grenen

Looking back towards Skagen from Grenen

For those too lazy or unfit to walk out there, a special sand bus will deliver them. After a quick glance passengers immediately huddle together in the damp wind waiting for the bus to return for them. At this point the land is far away, hidden behind the low line of white sand dunes. On all sides there is an endless sheet of grey, choppy water with perhaps a ferry on the horizon crossing to Oslo or Göteborg. Above, the sky is the same pale grey as the sea. The result is wonderful. There is a clear, bright light even on a dull day in the rain. No wonder this was the haunt of artists in the 19th century. The only mystery is what they actually found to paint! They flocked here in sufficient numbers though to establish a school of painting, similar to the Newlyn school in Cornwall. Here they painted endless seascapes, pretty girls in cotton frocks amongst the dunes and fishermen mending their nets or pulling in their boats. One of them, Holger Drachmann, is even buried amongst the dunes as his headstone testifies.

Grave of Holger Drachmann in the dunes at Grenen

The ever changing coastline leaves a bunker in the sea, Grenen

We decided to investigate camping possibilities locally and are now on a site at the edge of the village of Skagen which we later explored on foot. It seems a pleasant little place, far more lively and interesting than Hirtshals with streets of pretty, low colour-washed houses in grassy gardens. Everywhere looks clean, smart, bright and cheerful. The centre of the town is pedestriansised and is busy with tourists. Here there are restaurants and cafés with terraces outside where you can enjoy a beer and watch the passers-by. Admittedly temperatures here have plummeted compared to Hungary and Germany so now drinkers huddle with their jackets on under the overhead heaters which are running at full pelt to keep them cosy!

On the main street there is a shop selling amber ornaments and jewellery. There was an amber museum but it appears to have closed. Amber has been gathered on the beaches around here for generations and used to form a useful second income for collectors. It is formed from hardened resin from pine trees, millions of years old and is washed up presumably from Norway. Sometimes there are insects preserved inside the translucent deep yellow-gold substance where they landed before the resin had set.

Amber jewellery, Skagen

The town also has a local history museum that we will investigate tomorrow. We have been trying to discover something about the Battle of Jutland during the first World War. So far we have found nothing mentioned but perhaps there is something in the museum. Other delights of Skagen include the church, locked this evening, that is painted in yellow and pink, reminding us of a Battenberg cake, and also a teddy-bear museum! It the rain continues until next Tuesday we might even be reduced to exploring the teddies as a way of killing the time! That's Denmark for you!

Thursday 10th August 2006, Skagen, Jutland, Denmark
We find ourselves back on the same campsite as last night but on a different plot. This morning we moved off and parked in Skagen intending to look around during the morning and move on later. However, we found far more to detain us than we anticipated and by the time we were ready to move on it was 5.30pm with the thunder clouds looming. So we returned to the campsite, booked in for another night and sat comfortably in Modestine with glasses of wine for an hour while the rain teemed down and thunder and lightening rolled around the skies.

This morning Jill woke with a headache and the sensation of only running at 90%. This is something that frequently happens before a storm but somehow the link is never made until the storm breaks. Driving off the campsite we nearly had an accident because of the difficulty seeing an approaching car from the right hand driving seat. Fortunately Ian gave a warning just in time but it shook us both rather. Jill was glad not to do much driving today with the headache that has continued most of the day.

For most of the day we have enjoyed bright sunshine with just enough of a breeze to make it comfortable. We wandered around the pretty yellow houses in Skagen with their steep, red-tiles roofs. Many are recent but built in the same style as those from the old fishing village. All are beautifully neat and attractive with white wooden fencing surrounding gardens filled with hydrangeas and hollyhocks.

Street in Skagen

Guided by the smell of fish we made our way to the port. Skagen is the largest and most important fishing port in Denmark. We were too late for the fish auction, the only remaining evidence being the piles of melting ice on the quaysides where the catches had been unloaded. Around the port were black wooden store houses, container lorries and nets and ropes laid along the quay to dry. To one side were fishing boats and dredgers, on the other expensive yachts moored to the quay with their owners and guests sipping drinks on deck as they sunbathed and chatted on their mobiles.

Fishing port, Skagen

Fishing port, Skagen

Ropes on the quay, Skagen

Fishing boat leaving harbour, Skagen

Still with a headache and finding the glare on the quayside too much we explored a fish restaurant in one of the wooden warehouses. Empty at 10.30 in the morning the lady provided us with a couple of coffees and answered our questions about the different dishes on the menu in delightful English, with just enough uncertainty to make it sound really attractive. Displayed were sample dishes. All looked colourful, some rather strange. She did concede that the grilled squid and calamari were not actually caught in the North Sea but as they were popular they were brought up from Spain and the Mediterranean.

One of several fish shops and restaurants at the port, Skagen

Promising we would return at lunch-time we went off to explore further, checking up on the Battle of Jutland at the library. This took place in May 1916 off the west coast of northern Denmark. As it was between the British and German fleets and Denmark was not involved there is nothing mentioned locally that we can find. There were enormous losses on both sides and the result was indecisive. It apparently maintained Britain's supremacy at sea, Germany concentrating in future on submarine warfare.

At the Battenberg cake church, looking very pretty in the sunshine, we were just in time for a free lunch-time organ recital of music by Mendelssohn and Bach. It was well attended and provided a pleasant interlude in the cool interior of the church. The organ was modern and the church lacked the grandeur and wonderful acoustics of the cathedrals and major baroque churches of Austria but the recital was greatly appreciated by the audience.

St. Lawrence church, Skagen

After the recital, Skagen

We returned to the harbour to find the fish restaurant tables outside packed now with holiday makers enjoying huge dishes of prawns, squid, fish and chips, smoked fish, tuna and mackerel. We ordered sea bass, deciding this was the place to try it really fresh. It came with lemon, parsley potatoes, fresh salad and hollandaise sauce. Ian ordered a beer as well but Jill's headache was still with her and not knowing if we would be driving later she stuck to water. The meal was really nice. We ate squashed together on tables with Danish holidaymakers. This gave us a chance to actually hear the language properly. Mostly it was incomprehensible but there are lots of English sounding words in there somewhere. The Danes are a friendly, cheerful lot.

The museum turned out to be a picture gallery of works by local artists of the 19th century. It was very enjoyable, being mainly the works of the Danish painters Anna and Michael Ancher and P.S. Krøyer. From the 1870s to the start of the 20th century Skagen attracted a new kind of artist, lured by the remoteness of the location and the clear light. They preferred to paint outside rather than in a studio and the nature of their paintings reflects this. Many are of seascapes or fishermen hauling in their boats or sorting their catch. There are many portraits, both of the local community, the fishermen and their families, but also of the artists' community, each painting portraits of the other. While many are trivial scenes of daily life, some reflect the anxiety and tragedy to be found in the hard and dangerous lives of the fishing community - fishermen on the shore helplessly watching a ship in difficulty or a family's grief around the table on which lies the drowned body of a fisherman that has just been brought home by rescuers.

Finally we visited the home of the artists Anna and Michael Ancher where many more of their painting can bee seen. The building is typical of Skagen being single storey yellow rendered brick and timber set in a large green garden.

Gallery at the former home of Anna and Michael Ancher, Skagen

By this time we were weary and the sky was threatening, so we returned with Modestine to the camp site just as the storm finally broke.

Denmark - fairytales, runes and lego

2006-08-08T12:53:00.001+01:00

Friday 4th August 2006, Vejed, Jutland Peninsula, Denmark
We originally said we would make it up into Scandinavia and despite getting happily diverted so many times, we have finally arrived!

We left Flensburg after a picnic lunch by the harbour and, quite literally before we knew it, we found ourselves in Denmark. We only realised when we passed a garage with fuel prices written up in kroner and realised all the cars had their headlights on. Germany seems to be the only country in central Europe where headlights are not required during the day. The roads tend to be straight, fairly narrow and without a great deal of traffic. Consequently vehicles speed along overtaking everything in sight until they are flashed by oncoming vehicles. We think this is why driving with dipped headlights is the law. At least it ensures oncoming vehicles can be seen. Not that the Danes drive badly but it's a precaution. On the contrary, the roads in Denmark are generally not too busy and drivers are courteous and tolerant, particularly with pedestrians and cyclists.

Ian's fantasies about Denmark seem to have been borne out. The first shop we noticed after realising we were in Denmark was a sex shop! Actually it was advertised as a sex kiosk but we didn't investigate quite what that meant. Since then we've noticed several more despite this being very much a quiet rural area.

We stopped at Aabenraa, the first real town we reached, to get some money. The first problem was to find somewhere to park free as we had no money for a parking meter! The next was to find a bank machine that would accept our card. The first one rejected it. Apart from once in Hungary this is the only time it has happened. However, the next attempt was more successful. We guestimated a kroner to be about 10p. It turned out to be pretty accurate when we found a newspaper in a café to check exchange rates.

Our first Danish manhole cover! Aabenraa

We wandered the shopping precinct of Aabenraa and were relieved to discover prices are not as expensive as everyone had led us to believe. They are a little dearer than most of Europe, but no more so than England. Our first adventure was a coffee on a street café. Here Ian infuriated Jill by ordering in Danish and being understood! How does he do it? It shows which of us does all the work if he can find time to keep learning the basics of the language each time we change countries! Incidentally we counted up last night. We have been into fifteen countries so far, and in and out of some of those several times. Actually, Danish sounds more like English than German does. Quite a lot of words sound similar but are written rather differently. We are having less trouble reading things than we expected but it can be very frustrating to know you have only half understood a sign or the caption under a picture. The diacritical situation too, is both dire and critical! Most are new to us, we do not know how to pronounce the vowels and they are difficult to find on our computer.

We reached the little town of Vejen around 4pm. It is a convenient place for us to stop and decide where to go in Denmark from here. The campsite is most peculiar. Despite being the height of the tourist season we are the only people staying on this large and well laid out site! The facilities are clean, there are hot showers, use of a television, free cooking facilities and shady trees. There is also a well stocked shop and a charming manager who speaks perfect English and has lent us an electricity adaptor so we can write our blog. Hopefully not all campsites in Denmark have these electrical fitments or we may have difficulties keeping the fridge running and the computer working. Where is everyone? Even in the winter in France, Spain and Portugal we normally had someone else around. The rules say no noise after 11pm but Ian is threatening to go outside and sing until 11.05pm out of bravado. At least having the place to ourselves we have been able to sit outside cutting each others hair without a queue of hopeful customers forming as it did in Klagenfurt! We now look civilised again.

We've not really had chance to draw any conclusions about the country. People are friendly. Several have spoken to us in English. Meals out, coffees and ice creams do seem expensive but generally foodstuffs are not exorbitant. The countryside so far has been gently undulating with hedges and quite a lot of mixed woodland. It is all rather like England really.

We walked into the town of Vejen this afternoon. The buildings are low level and constructed in brick. They not very exciting and the town centre is just a small modern shopping precinct. There is a museum of art, closed this afternoon but with several very interesting statues set in a grassy area at the front. These all appear to be by Niels Hansen Jacobsen and seem very Scandinavian, full of angst and tragedy. They were very good. Just as good but more light-hearted was his troll in the fountain surrounded by pigs.

Mother and Death, Niels Hansen Jacobsen (1861-1941), Vejen
Based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Seems more of a Grimm Reaper to us!

Troll fountain, Niels Hansen Jacobsen (1861-1941), Vejen

Recalling that back in the 1960s when we were library school students, Denmark led the way in library design, we visited the town library. It is a very pleasant building, large for the size of the community with lots of brightly coloured shelves and displays. The overall effect though was that it is now rather dated and crowded. There were numerous cabinets devoted to a display of the largest collection of ceramic and fluffy tortoises we have ever seen, or indeed ever wish to see!

Interesting things turn up unexpectedly. Just as we were deciding we had found the most boring town in Denmark and that was why the campsite was empty, we discovered a side room in the library devoted to the work of Poul la Cour. Of course it was all in Danish so we couldn't fully appreciate it but it seems he was responsible for the first windmill outside the US to be designed to generate electricity – an early form of wind turbine. This was back in 1891. He apparently came from this area of Jutland and his windmill produced sufficient energy to light the local school and surrounding buildings for seven years before it was decided it was too dangerous and was replaced by an improved version. We think he used the electric charge generated by the windmill to separate out oxygen and hydrogen from water and then bring them together again as a highly volatile mixture that could be ignited to produce a brilliant white light. However, maybe we were reading double Dutch rather than Danish!

Poul la Cour, Vejen

"The first electric windmill", 1891, Vejen
See, Danish does look like English!

"Journal for wind electricity", 1904, Vejen

So now we must decide what to do tomorrow. Head north up towards Hirtshals or east towards Odense. Having just discovered that not only is there a Hans Christian Andersen museum in Odense, but also one of Elvis Presley memorabilia, it is quite likely we will head for there. All we want to know about the king of fairy tales and the king of pop in one city!

Saturday 5th August 2006, Odense, Fyn, Denmark
Denmark does not yet have the euro. We are gradually getting used to using kroner but some of the coins are quite strange. It goes further than we had feared. In fact, far from burning holes in our pockets, it's the kroner that have the holes.

The mint with the hole, Denmark

We did come to Odense today as we intended. We are staying on a campsite a few kilometres outside of the city but with excellent cycle paths, not only into the town but everywhere we could possible wish to travel in and around the area. It seems that almost every road has its cycle path and it really does make travelling around in towns a pleasure. You feel so safe on a bike here.

Elaborate manhole cover 1, Odense

Elaborate manhole cover 2, Odense

Elaborate manhole cover 3, Odense

It is really quite hot again. Too hot for our liking but it does cool down at night which means we sleep really well. We have to force ourselves to get up around 8am. Not so long ago we were only too glad to get up in the morning as the heat penetrated Modestine's insulated flanks by 6am.

We left our deserted campsite in Vejed and travelled along very quiet roads through pleasant countryside reminiscent of southern England. Even the little towns with their brick houses and low blocks of flats looked very like an English suburban town. It is the country most like ours we have seen anywhere on our travels. Everything is clean, neat and small but not in the least remarkable. There is little we have seen that is worth mentioning as characteristic of the country – except the friendliness of the people who are very open and shame us with their willingness to speak English. It is the first time this has happened to us. In every other country where we are unfamiliar with the language we have had to struggle by as best we may. Here it is almost frustrating not to be able to try.

We crossed from the peninsula of Jutland to the island of Fyn at the delightfully named town of Middlefart. Thinking about Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales Jill subconsciously hummed the tune of the "Ugly duckling". Thinking about the collection of Elvis Presley memorabilia Ian started singing "Return to sender" in his very own version of Danish! It sounded almost authentic and caused us much amusement.

This afternoon we cycled into Odense and visited the H.C.Andersen museum which incorporates the home in which he was born to poor, working class parents. The museum was the exact opposite of the birth place of Mozart in Salzburg which told the visitor almost nothing about his life. Here we left exhausted after three hours of absorbing countless displays and artefacts giving a fascinating insight into the writer's life and times. It was his fairy tales – over 150 of them – that ensured he is still a household name over 200 years after he was born, but he started his life as an actor, wrote a number of novels and poems and in later years became a great traveller. It is this aspect of his writing that we are now interested to follow up when we return home. During his lifetime he travelled outside of Denmark for a total of nine years and kept detailed travel accounts which he later published. Although his journeys were mainly within Europe he did travel to Africa and Asia as well.

Hans Christian Andersen (1805- 1875), Odense

Nowadays his writings have been translated and published all over the world and the museum has a library of thousands of the editions and translations which we were able to visit.

Library, Hans Christian Andersen museum, Odense

Andersen never married though he proposed to, and was rejected by, the opera singer Jenny Lind, known as the Swedish Nightingale. His fairy tale "The Nightingale" is widely accepted as having been written with her in mind. He appears to have been a large and awkward character but was also artistically gifted. Amongst the unlikely exhibits we saw were incredibly delicate patterns and pictures made by folding and cutting paper. The scissors he used for this and the size of his hands make it the more amazing that he could produce such delicate works. He suffered throughout his life from tooth ache and eventually had them all removed and replaced by dentures.

Once upon a time there was a kind tooth fairy who brought a present to a Danish story teller, Odense

Today the house where he was born, just two weeks after his parents married, is part of a little area of beautiful, single-story cottages with roses at the door and bright hollyhocks in front of the windows. In 1805 though they were wretched hovels at the poor end of the town where several families, each with numerous children who rarely made it beyond the age of five, would be crammed in without water or sanitation. His father was a shoe maker who died early and his mother an alcoholic washer woman. That he achieved such acclaim as probably Denmark's leading writer, and came to mix with the higher echelons of society is truly quite remarkable.

Birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark

Houses around the Hans Christian Andersen museum, Denmark

In the end we just had to give up reading everything and rush through the rest of the exhibition before the museum closed. We were really fortunate that all the texts were displayed in English as well as Danish. In that respect we are definitely at an advantage over many other international travellers visiting Europe's cultural hotspots.

Sunday 6th August 2006, Odense, Fyn, Denmark
Jill's gutted! Having been lured all the way across to Odense by the prospect of seeing the only Elvis museum outside of the USA, we now find the museum moved to the north of Denmark five years ago! Our German guidebook is dated 2005 so they are publishing out of date information.

This morning we cycled into the town again. Being Sunday in Denmark everywhere was just about as exciting as you might expect to find it. The streets seemed quite deserted. However, having dutifully waited for the traffic lights on the cycle track to turn green we were rewarded with a flashing sign saying we were the 742 and 743 cycles to pass through this morning! It was only 9.30am so that gives an idea of just how many bikes there are zooming around Danish cities.

On our way not to see the Elvis museum we called off to explore the museum of printing where there were supposed to be workshops and demonstrations. Once inside it became obvious that not only were there no demos or workshops but most of the museum was closed for refurbishment. What we saw though was enjoyable and there was a large library of books on the history of printing. Ian's ego took a knock however when we couldn't find any of his publications on the shelves!

Handpress, Museum of the Press, Odense

Binder's workshop, Museum of the Press, Odense

Newspaper rotary press, Museum of the Press, Odense

There were other exhibitions on other floors of the converted textile warehouse, but they were all rather strange. Excitement in Denmark consists of sitting in a darkened room watching a looped film of a car being washed, over and over again, all day long! We took a photo of the screen for the blog but it is even too boring for that!

Next door was Tidens Samling, a small museum of twentieth century lifestyles in Denmark, home of innovative furniture design. It is incredible just how dated everything looked! There was a special exhibition on the home in the 1980s. As most of our home was set up in the 1970s we expected everything to look more modern. Maybe we just don't notice our own home furnishings, or perhaps we just have timeless designs, but the room sets here looked far more dated with plastic chairs, Scandinavian teak furniture, posters of Che Guevara, enamelled teapots and platform-soled shoes. In one of the back rooms, out of sight of the volunteer staff who were chatting away in incomprehensible Danish to each other, we took a few items off the shelves and tried them on.

1960s Danish chic, Tidens Samling, Odense

1960s Danish chick, Tidens Samling, Odense

Straight from Monty Python, Tidens Samling, Odense

On our way out we were asked to sign the visitors' book. It was a ploy for the ladies to use their English. They were really nice and friendly and quite astonished when we said we were off to the Elvis museum. They had never heard of it but when we showed them the evidence in our guide book they determined to go next week.

We headed off on our bikes, miles out of town and ended up on a run-down industrial estate with nothing but a bowling alley open. We demanded to see the Elvis memorabilia waving our map and guide book as evidence when they tried to deny its existence.
Distraught with grief we returned to the town centre and found an internet place where we stretched our brains working out onscreen instructions in Danish. At least the keyboards are easier than in Hungary.

Seeing restaurant prices we decided instead to buy a savoury croissant each in a little supermarket. That cost us over £4 together with one coffee to share. We could have had a banquet for that in Hungary and even Germany was quite cheap. Later we brought half a loaf of bread and a bun. Together they cost about £3.50. This campsite for two nights is nearly £40 and electricity to run the computer and fridge costs us £2.50 a night. (This isn't really a moan, it's a way of recording costs for when we compare prices in the future.)

We returned to the museum of the 20th century to warn the ladies working there not to waste their time exploring the industrial hinterland of Odense seeking out their pop idol. They were as upset as we were and immediately started a silver surfers search on Google, triumphantly informing us that the Elvis collection was alive and well and living in Randers. We will continue our search there as we travel north.

Hans Christian Andersen completely dominates the town. There are numerous bronze statues of him in the streets and parks, roads are named after him and copies of his paper cuts have been cast in metal and adorn almost every corner of the city. He is to Odense what Goethe and Schiller are to Weimar, Van Gogh is to Arles and Mozart to Salzburg. It is quite fascinating arriving as an outsider, but living in the town and being confronted with the same icon day after day must become both monotonous and irritating. Perhaps it is not altogether surprising the town council decided Elvis was a cultural distraction!

Where Hans Christian Andersen spent his childhood, Odense

Paper cut by Hans Christian Andersen cast in metal, Odense

Apart from the composer Carl Nielsen, who hardly gets a look in beside Andersen, there is one other figure of note in Odense. That is King Knut, later St. Knut. The cathedral is dedicated to him and his tomb and mortal remains lie in the crypt there. Jill was delighted to discover the original location of his tomb suffered from rising damp. Ian though, with his superior knowledge, put the dampers on Jill, by telling her he was not the King Canute who tried to turn back the sea but a later one. It's been a bad day for Jill's daydreams with neither Knut nor Elvis turning up trumps.

This king Knut shuffled off his mortal coil in 1086 and was canonised around 1100. His tomb is still intact in the crypt and so are his bones. It's not everyday you see so much of a saint. His thigh bone is still connected to his knee bone and his neck bone to his head bone! There are a good few in between as well. He was apparently murdered in the church. Sounds a popular pastime around that date. When was it Thomas à Becket met a similar fate?

However, I digress – one has to find amusement where one can in a country as lacking in excitement as Denmark. The cathedral is 14th century, brick-built gothic, its appearance belying its age. Inside it is very pleasant with a beautiful carved and gilded altar screen dating from 1523.

Cathedral of St. Knut seen from the Hans Christian Andersen Gardens, Odense

16th century altar screen by Klaus Berg, Cathedral, Odense

King Knut's mortal remains, Cathedral, Odense
Photographed through a glass case

It has been hot today and we were weary so decided we had seen most of what Odense could offer – not an enormous amount for its size – and set off to find our bikes, chained to some railings somewhere in the town. On the way we discovered a young trio of actors and an audience of kids and parents enjoying street theatre. We joined the crowd. Obviously the language was quite incomprehensible to us but fascinating to listen to. The laughter and enjoyment of the crowd was quite infectious and we laughed and clapped with the best of them despite having little idea what it was all about.

Street theatre, Odense

We cycled back to the campsite and relaxed in the evening sun as we sorted out the images for tonight's blog.

Monday 7th August 2006, Randers, Jutland, Denmark
We are hot on the trail of Elvis! Just six kilometres from here his sequined white suits and 1,499 other items of memorabilia await us tomorrow morning! How could we have ever thought Denmark lacked sparkle!

The Landscape of Denmark, as in Friesland, is freckled with those tall, white, wind turbines. No matter which direction you look, you are almost guaranteed to see a few rotating their three limbs. Despite fears about ruining the environment we find they are quite acceptable and sometimes seem to add a certain charm to a view. It has never occurred to us to wonder how they came to be there until we encountered a low loader lorry today bringing a replacement arm for one of these silent giants. It proved quite incapable of navigating the roundabout and effectively blocked the traffic in all directions for several minutes as it manoeuvred around.

Lorry turning left with a wing from a wind turbine.

We left Odense this morning and drove to Jelling where Ian was eager to see a couple of tumuli and stones carved with runic inscriptions. we spent a very interesting couple of hours. The interpretation centre and museum even had a travelling exhibition on the Bayeux Tapestry. As we'd already seen the original we concentrated instead on climbing the high tumulus of King Gorm the Old who died in 958. He seems to have always been old and was the first true king of one of the oldest kingdoms in Europe according to the information leaflet. Gorm the Old had a son – presumably called Gorm Oldsen or possibly Gorm the Young. (Ian has just informed me he was called Harald Bluetooth and once his father died he became quite gormless!)

Nearby stand the runic stones incised on one side with an interlaced knotwork design very similar to the Celtic designs. On the back of the large granite slab was a runic inscription in those sharp, angular letters. Originally it was believed the stones would have been brightly painted. Similar designs, texts and patterns appear in the Lindisfarne Gospel, produced on the island just of the Northumberland coast a couple of hundred years earlier.

Runic stones in the churchyard at Jelling

Runic stone in the churchyard at Jelling

Modern runestone in the village of Jelling showing how they would have been coloured

The stones stand in the churchyard. The church is much more recent dating from 1811 but is on the site of the simple building erected by Harald Bluetooth after his conversion to Christianity. The present church is very different from those we have seen elsewhere in Europe, being a simple brick building, whitewashed inside and out with modern Scandinavian light fitments and very attractive stained glass windows. A ship hangs from the plain wooded roof and the polished granite floor is incised to resemble waves.

Interior of the church at Jelling

Outside the cemetery was neatly laid out, each grave assigned its own plot. From the top of the Tumulus of Gorm the Old it looked more like a little campsite than a cemetery! Wandering around it later we found it very attractive with its tiny neatly trimmed hedges around the graves each of which was marked with a rounded granite boulder, possibly weathered by the ice age. Each had its own inscription and it was here that we fully realised why Denmark seems to lack sparkle. Everything is the same! Even the names are the same. Here we found, crowded close together, Hans Hansen, Christian Christiansen, Anders Andersen, Niels Nielsen, Erik Eriksen, Jesper Jespersen and Jørgen Jørgensen. Honest! Elsewhere there are variants – Erik Niels Andersen, Niels Anders Eriksen and even Niels Erik Nielsen! That’s just about how original and exciting it gets!

Church and graveyard seen from the tumulus of Gorm the Old at Jelling

Gravestone in the churchyard at Jelling

So we left Jelling behind and continued through a mild mizzling rain to Silkeborg. Here we found the streets rather dull. The town only really developed around 1846 so it has little of historical merit and the main town seems little more than an uninspiring but functional shopping precinct.

Excitement on the streets of Silkeborg

The main square is a little better but we were regretting wasting our time stopping when we discovered an old paper mill down by the river. The afternoon was transformed! The guide and demonstrator spoke excellent English so we were able to fully appreciate our visit and they too seemed to enjoy the chance to speak in English to visitors who were familiar with the techniques of papermaking. The original paper mill was a main cause of the town's development and became one of the leading Danish rag paper manufacturers. They used to make the paper for the Danish banknotes and indeed for many of the Asian and African countries. Today most paper is machine produced so now this small industry is really just a museum. We even tried our hand at paper making. There was a small exhibition on watermarks and how they are moulded or stitched to the mould with copper wire.

Ian makes a sheet of paper, Bikuben Paper Museum, Silkeborg

Equipment for making embossed watermarks, Bikuben Paper Museum, Silkeborg

Hollander – used for making pulp from cut-up rags, Bikuben Paper Museum, Silkeborg

So absorbed were we that the afternoon sped by. Nearby is the museum, housed in the oldest building in Silkeborg, dating from 1767. Here we were told was Tollund Man, and indeed Tollund Woman. We hurried across to see them but the museum was on the point of closing as we arrived. We remember seeing a programme several years ago on these two bodies, dating from about 350BC. They were discovered, perfectly preserved in a local peat bog. They had both been hanged. Their clothing, bodies, even the rope that killed them were complete. Similar bodies have been found in Britain, including Lindow Man and another in Risdale Moss near Manchester. It would have been interesting to see them but certainly papermaking was a less macabre activity.

Handmade paper showing the head of Tollund Man as a watermark, Bikuben Paper Museum, Silkeborg

So we drove on northwards towards Randers along quiet, almost deserted straight roads through an undulating landscape with grassland and woodland to either side. It was very pleasant but not at all remarkable. That is how Denmark strikes us really. Everything is nice – an unimaginative word for a country that seems rather lacking in individuality. Hopefully we will gradually discover what makes it tick over the next week or so but just for now we cannot get under its skin. Everyone is so friendly and helpful, everywhere is clean, neat, orderly and rather dull.

As we drove along a stretch of straight quiet road through woodland we were overtaken. As the driver moved in again a large deer leapt out from the roadside directly into his path. The driver braked so violently a tyre burst and scattered across the road. The deer was hit full on and thrown right out of sight into the undergrowth on the far side of the road. It would have been killed instantly. We braked and mercifully avoided any contact with the car in front. The driver must have been so shocked by the incident. We stopped of course but as we didn't speak the language it was doubtful how much use we could be. Fortunately a car behind us also stopped and helped the driver as they went off to find the carcass. What does one do with a large dead deer? Does it have to be reported? Do you leave it there or take it home to fill the freezer? We just hope we personally never need to find out. They are a hazard though. It almost happened to us near Rohrbach a few years back. Deer may run from man but they have a death wish when it comes to motor vehicles.

We found the campsite in an open glade in a pine forest. This evening Ian has amused himself with the giant-size Lego bricks by the children's sand pit. One year after retirement and he has regressed to that stage already!

Ian plays with Lego bricks in Denmark

Sylt and Flensburg

2006-08-06T12:40:00.001+01:00

Monday 31st July 2006, Dagebüll, on the North Sea, Schleswig-Holstein
This really is a very pleasant site. It has only the minimum of facilities so does not attract large crowds. They tend to use the main site further down the road. The facilities here are clean and adequate and now that there is a cool breeze blowing the lack of shade is not so urgent. The site is called Moin Moin. This is a regional word which we have discovered means Good Morning or Hello. Most of Germany uses the word Morgen but Moin Moin is equivalent to the Bavarian Gruss Gott. This evening we have sat outside with glasses of wine while our supper cooked in the tiny oven we have with us. Until today we have not used it for weeks as it has been far too hot to cook.

Last night we eventually had a little rain and this morning everywhere felt much fresher though the rain that fell had completely disappeared into the grass which felt as dry as ever as we breakfasted outside.

We drove into Niebüll where we have spent most of the day. At the library we were unable to load material on to the internet as they did not permit us to use our USB stick. However, we solved this problem at the railway station before returning to the town centre for a very nice, inexpensive lunch at the local butcher/delicatessen where every day they offer a particular dish. Today it was roast lamb with vegetables which we ate at a table shared with others outside the shop front. Here we ended up talking to a couple who had visited Exeter and had fond memories of the cathedral, but most of all, memories of Pizza Express on the cathedral green. They reckon it serves the best pizza they have ever tasted!

During the afternoon we visited the Friesland Museum. It only opens for a few hours a day and is run by very well informed volunteers. We were the only visitors this afternoon and were given a guided tour by the curator. It took two hours to see around the farmhouse which is conserved as it would have been over the last few centuries. It was in use until the 1920s. Our guide was a very friendly man who quickly warmed to his subject when he realised Ian could cope with German and with translating the bits Jill didn't quite grasp – though that is improving very quickly. He was the same age as us and had attended school in Niebüll at the time Ian was here so long ago. They speculated they may even have met at that time!

He took us around the museum, room by room, explaining how the farm would have been run and how thatching with reeds was carried out, showing us the necessary tools. He explained the workings of the kitchen - bread making, the way the huge cast iron cooking pots would have been used, how water was drawn and heated and how farm produce was preserved for the winter months He showed us the box beds where the family slept and the loom where fabric was woven. He was frequently able to draw on examples from his own life, speaking about his grandfather and even showing us skates similar to the ones he used to get to school across the frozen winter landscape. Here the water level rises in winter, freezes and forms a sheet of ice over whole areas of the countryside. He showed us cupboards filled with women's lace bonnets, equipment for making candles, paintings and samplers done by local people, farming tools and nineteenth century ledgers with the farm accounts neatly written down with a quill pen. He showed us the stalls where the cattle were milked and livestock housed over the wintertime. It became clear from his descriptions that the whole building was efficiently designed, from its east-west orientation with the cattle at the east end - down-wind from the prevailing westerlies, to the seats of the farmer and his wife beside the south-facing windows, the farmer with his rack of pipes readily to hand, the wife with her embroidery and lace making equipment fixed to her side of the table.

Farmhouse museum in Niebüll

Main living room and bedroom at the farmhouse museum in Niebüll

Best parlour at the farmhouse museum in Niebüll

Candle-making equipment at the farmhouse museum in Niebüll

Kitchen range and cooking equipment at the farmhouse museum in Niebüll

Usually we prefer to look around a place at our own pace and work out how things function. In this instance though, it was really good to have someone so enthusiastic and knowledgeable to explain things to us in such a friendly manner. He obviously got as much pleasure from it as we did and he was in no hurry to get off home at closing time when we were still there chatting.

Later, back in town, we picked up a pretty Porthmerion mug for peanuts in a junk shop. Obviously it is not recognised or appreciated here as it is in Britain and other parts of Europe. We've been very good about not buying anything as we travel, knowing we would have to carry it around for the rest of the year. Now though, with only four weeks to go, we can perhaps afford to be a bit more self-indulgent.

Tuesday 1st August 2006, Dagebüll, on the North Sea, Schleswig-Holstein
Yes, we are still here! Having found a nice campsite why rush off up into Denmark? Everyone we have spoken to warns us it is expensive and there are still interesting things to do around this northernmost tip of Germany where we can understand the language and everyone is so friendly.

Looking at the map a while back it seemed as if it would be interesting to take Modestine to Sylt, a strip of land off the westernmost coast of German Friesland, linked to the mainland by a causeway and stretching right up to the Danish border. However, we discovered the only way out is across the Hindenburg Dam, a stretch of reclaimed land across the mudflats with the sea lapping at either side where drainage ditches and dykes are helping to reclaim a gradually widening strip back from the sea. The dam is only wide enough to support a railway line which is single track for much of its length. Vehicles have to be loaded onto navettes at Niebüll to be carried across the causeway and unloaded in Westerland, the only town of any size on the long, narrow strip of land that is Sylt. Having no real need for Modestine on the island, or indeed for Hinge and Bracket, we left them together in a car park in Niebüll and took the train across the causeway without them.

Vehicles being carried to the island of Sylt

As we left the mainland it started to rain. We have been longing for it to return but on an exposed spit of land almost devoid of trees, it was not quite the moment to welcome it back

According to our German guidebook Westerland is the most chic of all the German seaside resorts. Germany does not actually have many seaside resorts and perhaps we were naïve to assume this meant it was a rather nice place. We were generally disappointed with Sylt. While it was worth a single visit, we would never bother to go again. Westerland is overcrowded and overpriced. The streets in the centre may be chic but within half and hour we had become bored with shops selling locally made chocolate, smart coffee shops selling marzipan gulls' eggs and quark cake, expensive china shops selling Meissen porcelain and cheap souvenir shops selling mugs and teeshirts inscribed with "My family visited Sylt and all they bought me was this mug/teeshirt" accompanied by a long thin wormy looking shape with a hook at the top. (See a map of Sylt.) The enthusiasm for using other languages in Germany is sometimes carried to extremes. So, an expensive lingerie shop in the town centre is called "Touch Me Dessous" which strikes us as verging on the obscene! We strolled through the town to the sea front. Here our way was barred by a barrier and a ticket office. If you want to see the sea, you are expected to pay for it!

Manhole cover, Westerland

Uncovered woman, Westerland

Outside of the immediate town centre the roads were full of traffic jams – amazing when you think everything on the island from vehicles to foodstuffs has to come across the Hindenburg Dam! The streets were boring, stretching away into the distance with flats, trading estates and sand dunes to either side. There are only two roads to speak of on the island. One stretches about eighteen kilometres north of Westerland with the sea on either side, the other does much the same in the opposite direction.

Near the station we found the number 1 bus about to depart to the north of the island. (Presumably the number 2 bus goes south but we didn't investigate!) Bored with Westerland we took a ride up the coast to List, almost at the furthest tip. From here a ferry leaves for the Danish island of Rømø, a short hop across the water. This area proved to be more interesting though is only a small port with several cafes and bars and a few tourist shops. We explored the port and some of the shops, particularly those selling fresh fish and foodstuffs. The most northerly fish shop in Germany is called Gosch. We were impressed and bought Bratherring rolls there for our picnic lunch. Gosch, they were nice! We recalled today that we had found the fish menus around the Mediterranean region not really to our taste, being either full of bones or like rubber bands in expensive sauce, or to be swallowed whole and raw. Here though, we have really enjoyed all the fish dishes we have tried and have actually been eager to appreciate all the different possibilities. For one thing we can see them displayed, already prepared and clearly labelled so we know what we will be getting, and they are very much cheaper than the expensive menus we have seen in southern Europe. North Sea fish is also something with which we are more familiar. A herring is a herring, a mackerel a mackerel and a sprat is exactly that. (We still shudder to recall the plate of Devil's dentures we saw in Santiago de Compostela and wonder what on earth they were!)

Harbour at List

Most northerly fish restaurant in Germany, List

Friesian freezer, List

Smoked eels – sold by length, List

Smoked fish, List

At List the sun was really hot one moment and the wind and rain came sweeping in the next, only to disappear just as suddenly. It didn't take long to exhaust the possibilities on offer on the northern point of this landspit so we returned down the island to Westerland and caught the train one station back towards Niebüll to the village of Keitum. This used to be the historic "capital" of Sylt before Westerland developed as a seaside tourist resort. Here the houses were all in traditional style with reed thatched roofs, brick walls and pretty gardens. They were rather like those we had seen on Föhr but not quite so picturesque. Incidentally, we have learnt that while the buildings are traditionally reed covered, because the drainage of the Koogs has been so effective, reeds are no longer found here in sufficient quantities for thatching. Now the reeds are imported from the Hungarian Pusta, probably the very Hortobagy region we crossed in the torrential rain with the permanent chorus of frogs!

Reed covered cottages amongst the sand dunes near List

As we strolled around the village streets we could hear a very plummy British commentary from a loud speaker system at the polo ground on the far side of the railway track. Apparently Germany and Switzerland were locked in mortal polo combat but why the commentary needed to be in English we do not know. Fortunately the result was a tie which was a jolly good show all round what what!

Suddenly our friend the Rain discovered exactly where we were and spent the next ten minutes boisterously soaking us and eagerly accompanied us back to the station. Here the train was running thirty minutes late. British Rail is not the only one to have delays. Being single track for much of the route delays are almost inevitable. Nobody seemed too bothered and the girl waiting to board the train to sell refreshments had very little left by the time it arrived. Delayed travellers, crowded together on the platform seeking warmth and shelter from the rain, had consumed her Kuchen and emptied her Teekännchen!

Eventually though, we rejoined Modestine in Niebüll and retuned to our campsite here at Dagebüll. Rain followed gleefully behind and, making up for lost time, has spent most of the evening teeming down while we have been snug and comfortably warm inside Modestine. It has been an interesting day but unless Denmark is very different from here, there may not be enough to keep us happily occupied for the final month of our travels. We are in the process of rethinking our future plans.

Wednesday 2nd August 2006, Flensburg, Baltic Coast, Schleswig-Holstein
This evening finds us on a pleasant campsite within cycling distance of the town of Flensburg, still just within Germany on the eastern side of the Jutland Peninsula. We want to visit the town and in particular the museum as we were told by Frau Feddersen the other day that there are a number of paintings by Hans-Peter Feddersen on display there and one of the curators is a specialist in his works. We expected to arrive in time to visit the town during the day but it was evening by the time we arrived so instead we made straight for this campsite.

We left Dagebüll after breakfast but decided to use the internet in Niebüll before moving on as we still have rather a backblog to load and we needed to check ferry times for our return to England. By that time we decided we might as well get some wine and tins of food before we go into Denmark where we understand prices will be a lot higher. Then we thought we'd have lunch. Then we discovered the church was unlocked and went inside to explore. Then we decided we needed a coffee. Then we remembered a museum we intended visiting at Seebüll out on the polders, dedicated to the works of Emil Nolde. So that really was our day. We considered returning to Dagebüll again for the night but decided to press on to Flensburg and hope we could find a campsite when we arrived.

We really enjoyed the last few days in and around the little brick town of Niebüll. It is small enough to be friendly and relaxed but large enough to have everything you might need. It is also a pretty little town with attractive public gardens and quiet, tree-lined roads. Today we visited the simple brick Lutheran church, built in the 1730s.
Inside the walls are plain white and hung with several oil paintings including one of Luther himself. There is an impressive 17th century carved and painted pulpit with bible texts in Low German. There is also a painted altar piece flanked by carved angels. The pews and woodwork are painted in dove grey and pale green. There is an old, incised granite baptismal font and nearby a huge cross flanked by carved wooden figures.

Lutheran Church at Niebüll

Looking towards the altar and pulpit in the Church at Niebüll

From the Altar looking to the back of the Church at Niebüll

Font and Crucifixion in the church at Niebüll

Carved and painted pews dated 1730 in the church at Niebüll

Wooden pulpit with Low German inscriptions in the church at Niebüll

We were taken aback to discover here the original of one of the paintings we had been admiring in the book we were given about the artist Hans Peter Feddersen. Called "The return of the prodigal son" it hangs in the local church rather than one of the museums or private collections of his works. We felt quite excited to have seen it. It was only chance we went into the church and only chance too that we recognised the painting for what it was.

The return of the prodigal son by Hans-Peter Feddersen, in the church at Niebüll

Hans-Peter Feddersen (1848–1941) was an older contemporary of the artist Emil Nolde (1867–1956). Both painted local scenes and landscapes but their painting styles were very different. Nolde became more and more expressionistic in the way he worked. We drove out along little lanes right up to the Danish border - he was in fact born over the border but settled at Seebüll in Germany in a house built to his own design during the 1920s, set remotely amidst the polders where cattle graze under dramatic skies.

Cattle grazing under dramatic skies near Seebüll

Emil Nolde's house seen from the garden, Seebüll

Emil Nolde's garden house, Seebüll

He had the double-edged recognition of being included in the notorious Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition in 1937. During the war his works were banned by the Nazis and many paintings confiscated. He was however a prolific artist and spent the war years secretly working on smaller water colours for himself. These now form the basis of the exhibition. We expected to be the only people around, not realising how widely appreciated he was. When we arrived at his gallery and studio it was crowded with art enthusiasts from both sides of the border, many arriving in coach loads. The house had been his home, where he worked, lived and died. Now it displays a selection of his paintings, woodcuts and engravings.

We were impressed by his works and particularly by his vivid use of colour. Earlier works were more traditional portraits and local scenes but soon colour took precedence over form and they became increasingly expressionistic, often with an emotionally charged harshness. Apparently, according to Frau Feddersen, Hans-Peter Feddersen did not fully sympathise with the work of Nolde, asking him once why he chose to work as if he didn't know how to paint when all the time he was a first rate painter! Downstairs his original studio had been given over to his canvases of self portraits and religious paintings. The latter were particularly interesting being in wonderfully bright and frequently unexpected colours, bold splodges of colour that almost naively conveyed scenes from the life of Christ. The painting of the Holy Family was one of the gaudiest and most cheerful nativity scenes we have seen. Even today when we have become used to using colour and form in so many different ways it makes a very pleasurable impact. Regrettably we cannot show any photos of his works but try the Nolde Stiftung website.

Outside we wandered in his garden, beautifully maintained and, like his paintings, bright with vivid colours as dahlias, golden rod, climbing roses and nasturtiums jostled for space and gentle bees droned amongst them, their legs heavy with pollen.

If we were to make it to Flensburg before dusk we'd best get going. It was around 50 kilometres along a straight dyke that ran almost along the frontier between Germany and Denmark. The route was generally quiet but badly potholed. It seems strange that it is the routes along borders that tend to be neglected. It was the same on the German/Polish border. This campsite is at a useful crossing point between Germany and Denmark and many of the people staying here are Danish. They sound a remarkably boisterous lot with rather loud voices. It still sounds very strange to our ears but over the next couple of weeks we should get used to it even if we cannot understand it. All the signs on the campsite are in German and Danish. As Jill still finds it rather a struggle with German she's hoping she won't end up having to cope in Danish!

Thursday 3rd August 2006, Flensburg, Baltic Coast, Schleswig-Holstein
What do you think of when Denmark is mentioned? Bacon, open sandwiches, raw herrings, modern furniture, pastries, fairy tales and of course Lego. This was Jill's list. When she asked Ian for additional suggestions he immediately responded with "blonde naked ladies in the sand dunes."

This morning we cycled from the campsite the four kilometres into Flensburg where we have spent the entire day - and a very pleasant, if exhausting one it has been. It is a town of 87,000 inhabitants and the old centre stretches out along one main street with little courtyards off to either side. Formerly these were stores and warehouses for the port which lies on the fiord, parallel to the main street. Now these courtyards are full of flowers, craft shops and sunny cafés. Although we are still in Germany there is a definite feel that we are on the edge of Scandinavia here. Ian has purchased a German-Danish phrase book which he is eagerly studying. Danish seems rather like a mixture of German and English with several new diacriticals. So long as we say "Tak" and "Skål" a lot we should be okay.

Courtyard off the main street, Flensburg

In the 18th century Flensburg was an important trading port, particularly for the ships from the West Indies fleet. They would return here with cargoes of rum which were distilled and refined in the town. It is still famous for its distilleries today.

We started our tour of the town exploring the flea market where we bought a wooden budgerigar. No, we don't really know why either. He looked rather sorry for himself on the junk stall and we decided to pay up to a euro for him. As the man on the stall said, it was a bargain as we never needed to feed him.

Südermarkt, Flensburg

Further along the road we stopped to look in at a rum dealer's warehouse. Here we had glasses of rum slipped into our hands to try! What with that and the budgie on her shoulder Jill was beginning to feel like Long John Silver! The rum was very warming and made a change from a mid-morning coffee. We learnt all there must be to know about rum before we left. It has a history of being very popular with the Danish and the Norwegian fishermen who would drink it to give them courage before setting off to fish the North Sea.

A rum business, Flensburg

The main street is a long pedestriansised area of shops and cafés at ground level but the upper floors of the properties reveal the history of the town as a prosperous trading port full of merchants' houses with elaborately carved doors and windows, ornate gables, statues and decorated brickwork.

Nordertor, Flensburg

Down by the port we looked out across the fjord to the many sailing vessels and explored the old boatyard where in the past the wooden fishing boats were made. Now it seems to concentrate more on restoring some of the older boats rather than building new ones. It is though a very interesting area to explore. Nearby is a museum on the history of boat building in Friesland.

Sailing craft in the harbour, Flensburg

Boat builder's yard, Flensburg

Kompagnietor, the guildhall of ship owners and merchants, built in 1602, Flensburg

The salt water around the boats was full of jellyfish. They have a wicked sting but look quite beautiful as they propel themselves through the dark water by pulsating their delicate, transparent umbrella shape, their tendrils flowing out behind. Later in the museum we learned something of their life cycle. They are strange organisms. At this time of year the waters here are quite infested with them.

Jellyfish in the harbour, Flensburg

For lunch we went to a cheap Chinese restaurant for bean sprouts and noodles with duck and a bottle of Chinese beer. It wasn't what we expected to be doing but made a nice change from our practice of always trying out the local dishes. It seemed strange to be ordering a dish from the Chinese waitress in German on the border of Denmark, but the cosmopolitan mix is all part of the joy of travelling around Europe like this.

Flensburg seen from the museum

The afternoon was spent in the museum and art gallery perched high above the town on the first hill we have seen for ages. Our reason for being here was to seek out some of the paintings by Hans-Peter Feddersen. There are several in the Flensburg museum and even a couple of miniatures by his father, who had the same name. We were fortunate to be able to photograph a few examples of their work.

View near Deezbüll by Hans-Peter Feddersen, Flensburg Museum

Another view near Deezbüll by Hans-Peter Feddersen, Flensburg Museum

Dagebüll by Hans-Peter Feddersen, Flensburg Museum

Italian scene by Hans-Peter Feddersen, Flensburg Museum

Miniatures by Hans-Peter Feddersen the elder, Flensburg Museum

The museum also has a large collection of paintings by other North Frisian artists including several by Emil Nolde (even in the museum we were not allowed to photograph his works.) The open landscape and the clear light encouraged local artists during the nineteenth century and there seems to have been a proliferation of excellent works depicting the local landscape, peoples, buildings and interiors of that period. There is currently a large exhibition of paintings by Erich Heckel who produced many paintings of Flensburg and its surroundings. The exhibits have come from museums throughout Germany, in particular Berlin and Dresden. Like Nolde, Heckel was an expressionist painter making powerful use of colour in his works. He was part of the Brücke group of expressionists in the early 20th century.

For a change, and because it was included with our entry ticket, we pottered across from the art gallery to the museum. Here we found several more paintings by Feddersen but also an excellent local and natural history gallery with exhibits on the birds and animals of the area. Upstairs were recreations of rooms appropriately furnished to illustrate 17th and 18th century middle class Frisian houses complete with wood panelling, stone floors and huge, heavy, beautifully carved cupboards, tables, chairs and buffets.

By now we were rather weary so returned to our bikes, stopping only to retrieve a rubik cube being thrown out as unsellable junk by the stall holder we had purchased our budgie from. No doubt it too would have ended up in the rubbish skip if we'd not bought it earlier! We cycled back to the campsite to discover it had been pouring with rain here and the washing we'd left out to dry this morning was still soaking wet. We'll have to pack it into a bucket tomorrow morning and dry it off in Denmark.

North Friesland

2006-08-04T10:20:00.002+01:00

Friday 28th July 2006, Dagebüll, on the North Sea, Schleswig-Holstein
During the night we were woken from our fitful, sticky sleep by the slight patter of rain on the roof! Seconds later we were outside in our night clothes hoping for a thorough soaking. Alas, after a few sputters the rain departed leaving us with nothing but a few ineffectual rolls of thunder. This morning all evidence of the rain had disappeared and the sun rose as hot and bright as ever.

We left the campsite as quickly as possible, having not a speck of shade around Modestine, and returned to the little town of Husum. Acting on local advice, at the railway station we discovered everything we needed - an air conditioned café with a really effective and cheap internet connection plus large mugs of good filter coffee and croissants that tasted every bit as good as those in Paris. From then on things seem to have gone so much better for us. With the cooler temperature we felt well and comfortable again for the first time in ages and the internet worked like a dream for us. We found ourselves smiling again and starting to make plans. Outside in the streets it was as airless as before but we hugged the shadow of the walls as we passed through the streets of this attractive little Friesian town. Ian wanted to visit the home of the local writer Theodor Storm as he had studied and enjoyed his writings at University. Jill had never heard of the writer but was more than happy to explore the interior of one of the lovely early 19th century houses. Ian found great pleasure in reading various letters and manuscripts displayed in the house by the Theodor Storm Society, and we both enjoyed seeing the rooms, much as they would have been in the 1860s, with the writer's own furnishings, photos and artefacts. Despite the large rooms and high ceilings, the air was stifling inside and the curator told us the weather here has been like this for weeks with the few drops of rain last night being the first for ages.

Theodor Storm's house, Husum

Garden, Theodor Storm's house, Husum

Interior, Theodor Storm's house, Husum

Theodor Storm's study, Husum

Interior, Theodor Storm's house, Husum

Interior, Theodor Storm's house, Husum

We looked briefly at the harbour and walked up to the pretty little castle set in shady parkland where Ian had vainly hoped to find some exhibits from the North Friesland museum which is currently closed for restoration. Back in the town we discovered a store with air conditioning and spent far longer than we needed choosing a map and guide book in German to Denmark.

Manhole cover, Husum

Street organ grinder, Husum

Harbour, Husum

Castle, Husum

Castle gatehouse, Husum
There seems to have been considerable subsidence during construction to judge by the alignment of the portico

We left Husum around 3pm and drove north by minor roads that enabled us to explore the polderlands, tiny villages, isolated farmsteads, dykes, canals, small sluices and drainage works, sheep, cabbages and wheat. Climbing up on top of one of the dykes we could see where gradually the mudflats were being reclaimed, silt building up behind low hurdles and little by little being drained and eventually planted with tough grass on which sheep seemed happy to browse. The open sea was invisible, far away across miles of shallow, oozing grey mud and reed beds.

Hurdles used to assist in land reclamation, North Friesland

Typical landscape, North Friesland

View down onto thatched cottages from the top of a dyke near Wobbenbüll

The land all along this coast has been reclaimed from the sea and a high dykes hide it from view, protecting those inside. There is a saying here that while God created the sea, the Frisians created the coastline. This is undeniable. How long they will manage to hold it against the sea is questionable. Little by little the sea is winning, as shown by comparing some of the older maps with those of today.

Eventually we arrived here at Dagebüll on the west coast. Apart from being a very agreeable tiny North Sea bathing resort, it is the port from where the ferries leave taking passengers and vehicles regularly out to the islands of Föhr and Amrum. Further out to sea, completely isolated, lies Helgoland.

A cool breeze greeted us that made the sun bearable. After sorting ourselves out on a very pleasant little campsite we took Hinge and Bracket and cycled off to explore the area. It has been a wonderfully pleasant evening. The sun has clouded over and the breeze ensures we no longer feel permanently sticky from the heat. On the other hand, the air is so damp and charged with salt that we feel just as sticky but many degrees cooler. Here we are really at the sea. It breaks in waves against the shore lined with beach huts and a cycle track on the seaward side of the grassy dyke. We watched the ferry returning from Föhr as we paddled in the North Sea, though it felt warm enough to be the Mediterranean. On the horizon we could see several of the surrounding islands.

Ian had been here as a child and remembered a special train that made its way along a narrow track and across a causeway out to the Hallige (small islands) of Oland and Langeness. Its timetable was regulated by the tides and the wind as it was driven by a sail. We cycled along the path beside the sea and eventually found the rather overgrown railway track stretching out across the mud flats grazed by sheep, with reeds and marsh birds including a huge heron and an orange-billed black and white oyster catcher. The area is now a nature reserve for seabirds and seals.

Track for the sail-driven railway out to the islands, Dagebüll

Enthusiasts working on the train, Dagebüll

Turning back inland we sought out the engine shed for the train and discovered it being worked on by a couple of railway enthusiasts who were happy to show us the tiny trucks with the mast attachment for the sail. One of them even remembered Tante Magda, the lady who used to sail the train along the track during the days that Ian spent here. Apparently she was quite a local character. Sadly for us the trains do not run very often to the islands which are now nature reserves and when they do it largely to supply the Hallige and for coastal protection work.

So we went to the ferry port to discover if we could take Hinge and Bracket out to Föhr for the day. This looks a lot more promising so depending on the weather we may do that tomorrow. A slight problem is that we should find a garage as we have discovered one of Modestine's tail lights has broken.

Ferry leaving for Föhr, Dagebüll

It was pure joy to sit outside Modestine for supper this evening. The sun had disappeared, leaving a slight pink glow over the sea, and there was a cool breeze. Our skin was sticky with salt and eventually we were actually obliged to put on our pullovers! It seems inconceivable after the heat of this morning! Our energy is fast returning.

A final delight came when we discovered we are now able to pick up the BBC on our radio! It will again be possible for Jill to follow the events in Ambridge, once she can unravel the complex shenanigans that appear to have been taking place in this rural idyll over the past year. We will also be able to hear the news again. Both programmes will probably be much as they were this time last year. Disasters in Iraq and the Middle East, droughts in South East England and corruption in the Labour party. Emma Grundy giving Will and Eddy the run around, Alisdair and Shula at loggerheads and yet another Country and Western event organised by Jolene and Fallan at the Bull. Are we right?

Saturday 29th July 2006, Dagebüll, on the North Sea, Schleswig-Holstein
No two days are ever the same and almost every day turns out to have some unexpected twist to it. We have not been to the island of Föhr today after all. This morning was almost chilly, a perfect day for cycling around on a treeless flat island but we decided we'd better drive into Niebüll, the nearest little town and the last of any size before reaching Denmark. Tomorrow being Sunday we realised we would be unlikely to find a garage where we could get Modestine's lights sorted. So by 9.30 this morning we were already in Niebüll, a town of about 9,000 inhabitants. Here we were directed to the Mercedes garage which had a workshop open this morning. In no time the repair was made, curiosity expressed about Modestine being a right-hand drive and they even checked our tyre pressures for us. When we went to pay, the bill for 30 minutes work and a couple of bulbs was 4 euros! They couldn't be bothered to charge for labour or writing official receipts so just charged us for the bulbs! We do not imagine any Mercedes main dealer would do that in England, particularly for working on a vehicle with which they were not familiar.

There was a market in the centre of Niebüll this morning. As we walked into the town centre we were struck by just how English it looked. It was for all the world like a little Suffolk market town with red brick buildings, a tractor towing a cart loaded with farm vegetables straight from the fields and stalls selling local cheeses, dried sausages, eggs and butter. There were fish stalls selling smoked herrings, mackerel and salmon and flower stalls with potted plants and cut flowers. There were also stalls of table linen, embroidery and lace and knitting wool. In the corner of the square was an English telephone box and tables were out in front of the brick built town hall with people stopping for coffee and a chat with friends. To one side of the square was the Richard-Haizmann-Museum of Modern Art.

Market day in Niebüll

Ian used to stay in this town when he was a teenager and had known a local artist, Pitt Strauss, who made him a gift of one of his works. At the museum Ian enquired after the artist who was well known to the curators. He is no longer alive, nor has the museum been able to acquire any of his works for their collections as he normally guarded them jealously.

We explored the town searching out the house where Ian used to stay. Over the years several exchange visits were made with the children of the family. Ian even went with them to the local school where he sat in on English lessons.

Out in the countryside, isolated on one of the Koogs (polders) stands a large brick built farmhouse with a thatched roof, built in 1858 and surrounded by endless fields of waving corn. This is where Ian's mother came in 1928 at the age of seventeen from her school in south London to look after a little girl for a few months when a new baby arrived in the family. It provided her with a unique chance to improve her German at a time when girls rarely had such opportunities. The contact with the family was maintained against all the odds, surviving even the War, and later led to Ian's links with the area and his interest in the German language. Links with the family, named Feddersen, only ended with the death of Ian's mother a few years ago although we knew that the little girl she cared for, now a lady of 84, was still living elsewhere in Germany.

The house had been in the same family since it was originally built and occupied by the artist Hans-Peter Feddersen (1848-1941). His father had the same name and so too did his grandson and great-grandson. The artist has produced some works of exceptional quality that have been highly acclaimed and can be found in museums and galleries across Germany. He was one of the leading painters of the Weimar School of Art before moving to the family farm near Maasbüll and devoting himself to atmospheric oil paintings of the windswept north Friesland countryside.

As we drove along one of the dykes Ian recognised the farm. It still had the original whale's jaw bone at the entrance that he recalled from his childhood visits. We stopped to take a photo. In the courtyard someone was working and Ian asked if the house was still in the same family today.

Ian at the gate to the Feddersen's house

Ian explained that his mother had been at the house in the 1920s and before we knew what was happening we had been invited inside, served with glasses of redcurrant juice and made welcome by a lady who spoke excellent English. This was Frau Margret Feddersen, the widow of the painter's grandson, whose sister Ian's mum had looked after. Curiously, Frau Feddersen had worked in the school in Niebüll teaching English and had actually met Ian at that time when he sat in on her lessons. Ian remembered her, but not surprisingly, she could not recall him. However, there were many threads, and links that over the next couple of hours where drawn together and both Ian and Frau Feddersen obviously got great pleasure recalling the past and filling in gaps in the history of events in the lives of those in both families. She was also able to tell Ian what happened to various children he had known in the town 45 years ago who had been her pupils.

Feddersen's farmhouse, near Maasbüll

We sat, surrounded by memorabilia of the artist, including a portrait of his daughter Lolle as a young girl. Later in life it was she who invited Ian's mother to stay with the family to help her with the children. There were also examples of landscape paintings of this area with its wild, desolate expanses, clear light and wide impressive skyscapes. When we eventually left, Frau Feddersen gave us a copy of a publication about the artist with several beautiful reproductions of his paintings, based on a doctoral thesis by Dorothee Bieske, now a curator of the museum at Flensburg.

In the garden she showed us the artist's studio, still there but unused. She explained that the whale's jawbone at the gate had been brought back from Greenland by her husband, the artist's grandson, who was once a mariner and had acquired it, along with a vicious looking rusting harpoon, from a whaling friend when he died.

Frau Feddersen spoke almost entirely in English, very coherently and with astonishing clarity of thought as she recalled all the different threads of the family's history. This was all the more surprising in that she had been considerably younger than her husband and had entered the family after Ian's mother's contact with the farm had ended. We feel we have been very privileged to have been made so welcome by such a charming, friendly and well informed lady who gave us her time so willingly and without being forewarned of our visit. Ian's mum would have been very touched to know about our meeting this afternoon and what happened to so many of the people who had been so important in her life over so many years.

We have been rather thoughtful for the rest of today. Once we left the farmhouse we returned to the campsite and took our bikes out for a ride in the countryside, visiting the pretty local village with its brick church hiding from the winds of the North Sea behind the high dyke, grazed by countless sheep. We are finding this a very interesting countryside with its own charm, despite its initial apparent emptiness and can appreciate the fascination it held for this gifted painter.

Sheep grazing on the steep landward side of the dyke near Dagebüll

Cycling near Dagebüll

Sunday 30th July 2006, Dagebüll, on the North Sea, Schleswig-Holstein
Today we did manage to travel out on the ferry to Föhr with our bikes and we have spent a really lovely day. This evening though we are quite exhausted, mainly because the weather has turned hot, close and humid again.

The crossing on the ferry takes about 45 minutes. It doesn't look particularly far, showing just as a very low line of yellow sand on the horizon. The water though is so shallow that the ferry cannot simply sail across but has to follow a circuitous route that has been dredged out for it between maker buoys and silver birch trees! It looked most odd seeing the slender white trunks of these leafless birches sticking up out of the sea. There are several ferries running a non-stop service with a fast turn-around at either end. Cars, bikes and passengers are carried, most vehicles having several bikes on the roof or fixed to the back. On the island there are traffic jams of bikes! Apart from those going over on the ferry they can be hired on arrival. Cars are not greatly in evidence but there is a very heavily used network of cycle paths throughout the island, which is about the same size as Jersey, but considerably flatter! We've made the comment before that Ian always heads straight for the highest hill around when we reach a new area. The highest point on Föhr is only nine metres above sea level so we were easily able to manage that.

Bicycle park at the beach, near Nieblum, Föhr

Bikes around here are enormous! Real stallions of the road with huge wheels and high handlebars. They cruise casually along sniggering to themselves as they pass Hinge and Bracket with our feet whirring on the pedals and their wheels no more than a blur as they struggle to cover the same distance! It's so flat that nobody need any gears here either on the island or the mainland. While these huge Friesian beasts treat our treasured team members with contempt, their owners gaze in astonishment, fascinated that anything so small can exist, let alone fold up small enough to fit into a bag. It's rather the same story as we have with motor homes and their owners when they see Modestine. (Legoland isn't too far away once we are over the border into Denmark. That's how people seem to think of us here with our miniature vehicles.)

The sea between Föhr and the mainland cannot be more than a few feet deep on either side of the ferry channel. Yellow sandbanks crowded with wading sea birds can be seen showing above the water. All around us sky and sea meet, each a reflection of the other, surrounding us entirely in a multi-shaded aura of blue, from the shimmering iridescent azure of the shallow waters, through the darker blue-green tones of the channel, both flecked with white from the tiny sparkling waves. Above are the paler blues and dove greys of the clouds and sky. There is nothing but a thin line on the horizon ahead that is Föhr and another behind that is the mainland at Dagebüll.

Approaching Föhr

On arrival we first explored the main town of Wyk. Actually it's the only one though there are several very pretty villages, some of which we later visited. The town was crowded with happy holiday-makers and the cycle parks packed solid. Away from the harbour breeze it was very hot and close. Above the beach there were countless little cafes and the sandy beaches were covered in brightly coloured basket seats, small children and sandcastles.

Bathing machine and bathing beauty, Wyk, Föhr

Sea front at Wyk, Föhr

There was a Sunday market on the jetty and we joined the crowds for a Stehcafé lunch at one of the mobile canteens selling jacket potatoes filled with crab meat and shrimps with garlic mayonnaise. Other diners were enjoying rollmops, smoked fish sandwiches fried fish and even Kartoffelpuffer (battered potato cakes) with apple purée.

Lunch – shrimps, not worms! Wyk, Föhr

We have only cycled part of the island. It really has been too hot and close to do more. We were surprised to find how much of an effort it was to force ourselves out into the countryside and head off through some of the pretty villages of reed–thatched cottages with their very beautifully decorated front doors and enclosed gardens bright with climbing roses and hydrangeas.

Typical doorway, Nieblum, Föhr

At Nieblum we parked and explored the village on foot, including the very attractive church yard surrounded by fields of stubble where the harvest had recently been gathered in. This really is a picturesque little village of 19th century cottages. We stopped in the garden of one where refreshments were being served under shady umbrellas. Here we had a couple of coffees to wake ourselves up and Ian managed to find room after his lunch for warm cherry cake and whipped cream. After that he had to struggle to build up enthusiasm to continue our round route back to Wyk along the quiet rural byways where the main traffic was bicycles. On the way we stopped beside a windmill to watch a gymkhana. The chief event seemed to be dads downing litres in the beer tent. Out in the field there were dozens of Brigittes and Brunhildas cantering their ponies around the field but not doing a great deal else.

Village church, Nieblum, Föhr

Churchyard, Nieblum, Föhr

Cottages, Nieblum, Föhr

Cottages, Nieblum, Föhr

Gymkahna, Wrixum, Föhr

Later, back in Wyk, we took Hinge and Bracket for a quick circuit around the Berliner Ring, just to restore their self esteem after being laughed at and looked down upon during the afternoon. Normally this is Berlin's equivalent of London's M25 but Wyk has its very own version, covering about a kilometre around a very pleasant quiet residential area! After that final exertion we sat by the beach licking ices until it was time to catch the ferry back across the sea. On deck it was still very hot and the air hardly moved during the crossing. We dozed most of the way.

Ferry returning from Wyk, Föhr

There is something rather exciting about seeing a crowd on the quay watching the ferry arrive from an off-shore island, frequently bringing friends and family together. Knowing how far we are from our real home, there was a rather nice feeling cycling off the ferry this evening on our little bikes, and making our way through the streets of Dagebüll back to Modestine in the middle of her field. Ian stopped at the café by the campsite entrance and bought a pile of chips and soon we were enjoying them with home-made fish cakes from yesterday's market in Niebüll and lots of salad, together with the rest of last night's wine.

This evening, as we write this, it is becoming apparent why we felt so drained on the island. Thunder is rumbling loudly around the skies, lightening is flickering out at sea and there are even a few heavy drops of rain. We've been standing outside hopefully to welcome him back like the prodigal son, but he's still reluctant to return.

Schleswig-Holstein and Lubeck

2006-08-02T10:21:00.001+01:00

Monday 24th July 2006, Römnitz near Ratzeburg, Schleswig-Holstein
There is a strange feeling that we are nearing home even though we are actually heading towards Denmark. There is something about the little red brick villages we have been passing through that remind us of Suffolk while the many shallow lakes and flat landscape are reminiscent of Norfolk with its Broads.

We left Potsdam just before midday and made our way north towards Hamburg. Jill was anxious to move on, aware that time is fast running out. In just five weeks we will need to be back in Exeter and we still have so much we hope to do. So we missed out the town of Brandenburg and have managed to avoid Hamburg and several smaller cities in order to move north as quickly as possible.

We have been amazed at just how empty the landscape is in Northern Germany. Most of our travels have been in the area of the former GDR where large collective farms were the norm. The legacy of this is still there with endless acres of cereals, ripe for harvesting, or huge fields of stubble that stretch as far as the eye can see across the empty landscape. It can easily be fifteen or twenty kilometres between villages and these seem to be little more than several farmsteads gathered together.

There is also much woodland. We seemed to pass for ever along die-straight roads through pine forests but with nowhere to pull off the road for a rest. Sometimes we would travel for several minutes without seeing another vehicle, and this on the main road linking Hamburg to Berlin!

At Wittenburg we stopped for fuel and to stock up on food as we had done no shopping during our visit to Berlin. We seem to have made good progress, the driving has been about the easiest we have done anywhere – the roads make rural France look busy! Soon we were passing into Schleswig-Holstein and back into the area that was always part of West Germany. It may be for this reason that fields here are smaller and there are fences and hedges. Certainly the landscape is more interesting and hospitable with horses in paddocks, cattle out in the fields, pretty little villages that are reminiscent of England built in red brick and tiles, sometimes using timber beam construction, little churches with wooden spires, weeping willow trees and pretty gardens.

Ian announced a sudden desire to visit Lübeck and as we do not wish to drive in the city we have found a campsite beside a lake on the edge of one of the little villages. It is peaceful and pretty here. Tonight Jill went for a swim and Ian for a paddle. In fact all we could do was paddle as no matter how far out we waded it never seemed to get much above our knees. A bit disappointing for Jill but it is certainly a very beautiful setting and ideal for shallow boats and canoes. It may be possible to cycle to the town of Ratzeburg tomorrow and take the train into Lübeck.

Ratzeburger See Römnitz

As we sat by the lake this evening Ian mentioned places in the area he had visited in his youth when he was studying German. Jill had not realised he had ever visited this area before so it looks as if there may be a few more ghosts from the past to sort out before we return home. Ian's mum was a student of German in her youth and worked as a nanny to a German family right near the border with Denmark when she was a teenager in the late1920s. She remained in contact with the family and friends for many years much as Jill has done with her friends in the Jura. Contact was lost during the war but picked up again later. The result was that the next generation of young people made contact with each other and exchange visits were made. It is here therefore that Ian learned much of his German that later led to him studying it for his degree.

Ian's mum is no longer alive and links with the area have lapsed for some time. However, Ian is eager to see the region again and to perhaps recognise places he once knew well. It will provide an interesting purpose for exploring the area which shows every sign of being fascinating anyway.

Ian has just been checking the map – when isn't he? He has announced that we are as far north as Blackpool! That's a deal further north than we were in Tarifa!

Tuesday 25th July 2006, Römnitz near Ratzeburg, Schleswig-Holstein
Same place, different campsite. This morning we decided in view of the heat that it would be foolish to cycle eight kilometres to the railway station and still have any energy to explore Lübeck. So we packed up and left the campsite by the lake and drove to the railway station at Ratzeburg. It turned out to be right on the far side of the town which is on an island in the lake linked to the shore by a causeway. It would certainly not have been sensible to cycle there.

We left Modestine in the station car park and twenty minutes later were walking out of the main station onto the streets of Lübeck. It was love at first sight! We were both immediately captivated by the city with its gabled merchants' houses, enormous brick churches, tall green spires, tiny almshouses, beautiful little courtyards filled with roses and hollyhocks, cobbled streets and mediaeval gateways. The city is encircled by a wide canal with commercial and pleasure craft and of course has a huge port. The last two we have only glimpsed briefly but there was a tang of the sea in the air as we looked out towards the harbour. We have yet to see the sea but the air is fresher here and we have a yearning to once again be near to salt water. The last time we were on a beach was north of Ravenna on the Adriatic. How long ago that seems and how hot and airless it has been deep in the centre of Europe over the past few months.

It is still very hot. The liquid crystal thermometer displayed in the centre of Lübeck this afternoon registered 40 degrees. But at night here it seems much cooler than further south.

It is so very different here in Northern Germany. As the countryside and villages yesterday reminded us of England, so today Lübeck reminded us of Holland. It is a beautiful city getting on with its everyday life rather than a tourist showpiece. It has so many churches, museums, galleries and ancient commercial buildings it is impossible to do any sort of justice to them here. So below is a selection of photos to give an impression of what we saw today.

Holstentor under restoration, Lübeck

Burgtor, Lübeck

House in Rosengarten, Lübeck

Glandorpsgang almshouses, Lübeck

Historic port, Lübeck

Street leading to St. Aegidien's Church, Lübeck

Grosse Petersgrube, Lübeck

The city was very badly bombed during the war, presumably because, like Kiel to the north, it was a port. The main raid took place on Palm Sunday 1942, shortly before Exeter was badly bombed in revenge. It is difficult, looking at the city today, to appreciate the state of damage after the war. There are many photos though, showing the damage before restoration. Frequently buildings have had to be almost completely rebuilt.

St. Mary's Church, Lübeck, 1942

Cathedral, Lübeck, 1942

We visited the church of St. Mary which is the tallest brick church in the world. Inside the area is vast with its huge gothic arches, stained glass windows and simple, clean lines, devoid of flamboyant decoration such as we have seen in the baroque churches around Vienna. Here the beauty is in the architecture, carrying the eye for ever upwards, rather than in ornamentation. There is an astronomical clock housed here.

Friends reunited, outside St. Mary's Church, Lübeck
The Devil reflects a legend connected with the building of the church

Nave, St. Mary's Church, Lübeck

Astronomical clock, St. Mary's Church, Lübeck

Next we went on a guided tour of the Rathaus or town hall. This is built using red fired bricks and others that had been glazed black to provide an interesting decorated exterior. Originally dating from mediaeval times it has been added to in the 19th century in similar style using machine manufactured bricks rather than hand-made ones.

Town Hall from the Market Square, Lübeck

Town Hall from Breite Strasse, Lübeck

Audience room in the Town Hall, Lübeck

Stairway with historic murals in the Town Hall, Lübeck

Corridor with mayoral portraits in the Town Hall, Lübeck
Not a Vermeer painting!

Worthy of special mention was the hospital where the elderly and infirm have been cared for and accommodated since the 13th century. It is still in use today. The main hall is decorated with 15th century frescos, carved screens and statues of the saints.

Heiligen Geist Hospital, Lübeck

Heiligen Geist Hospital, Lübeck

Gunter Grass, the noble prize winner for literature, is a son of the city. His home is now a museum. Although we knew of him as a writer we had not realised he was skilled as a painter and sculptor as well.

Also from Lübeck are the Mann brothers, Thomas and Heinrich, both writers. Their home is now a museum of their works and time. The house is known after the title of possibly Thomas Mann's most renowned novel, Buddenbrooks. Ian studied Mann at university and Jill confesses to trying to read it – in translation – years ago but found it too heavy going. Little could I have known that today I would be sitting drinking a beer at the bar just opposite the very house where it was both set and written! I'll have to have another attempt when we get home.

Buddenbrooks House, Lübeck

We'd been walking most of the day in great heat. Fortunately everything is close together in the old town and the rows of stunning, gabled houses either side of the cobbled streets are almost guaranteed to provide a little shade at any time, so it has not been as difficult as Dresden, Berlin or Vienna where each sight stands isolated in a furnace of sunlight. However, by the time we eventually sat down for a beer we found it hard to get going again. A cursory glance in at the cathedral on our way back towards the station was all we could manage. After the beautiful interior of St. Mary's church the cathedral seemed something of an afterthought being white painted brick inside. Like all the churches in Lübeck it is huge in scale and has some interesting monuments.

Cathedral with Zeughaus in front, Lübeck

We caught the train back to Ratzeburg and rejoined Modestine. We were not wildly enthusiastic about last night's campsite so decided to try the other one we'd seen a sign for. No campsites are perfect and each has its peculiarities. Prices seem much the same, around 16-19 euros in this area, 25 euros at Potsdam. Here facilities are a very long way in complete darkness from the camping area but at least hot water and showers are included. It is annoying to sometimes discover, as you rush to clean up after the heat of the day, that it costs an extra euro each for a three minute shower.

Wednesday 26th July 2006, Büsum, on the North Sea, Schleswig-Holstein
Our steady advance on Denmark continues as we travel northwards. The sun is travelling with us and is as unrelenting as ever. We decided to head for the North Sea hoping it would be fresher here than on the Baltic and also that there would be fewer summer visitors. Probably we have been correct on both counts. Certainly the roads have not been busy and generally this area of Germany seems very sparsely populated. There is also a slight breeze this evening up on top of the dyke that protects the coast from the winter gales – difficult to imagine under today's searing sunlight! Our miscalculation was to forget that being flat reclaimed polder lands with endless acres of cereals and herds of black and white Frisian cattle, there are very few trees and no welcome shade to relieve the eyes from the bright perpetual glare of the sun. Out in the midst of it all farmers are gathering in the harvest, making their way back and forth with their combine harvesters, lost amidst a choking cloud of dust.

Leaving the campsite this morning we parked in the attractive little town of Ratzeburg on its island in the lake in the vain hope of finding internet access. Ian went off to discover the cathedral which is brick built Romanesque, constructed in the 12th century and standing in a picturesque position amid greenery perched above the lake. Jill had too many blisters from wearing new sandals around Berlin and Lübeck to be enthusiastic about a walk around the cobbled streets, so contented herself with browsing the little shops of the town and watching people going about their daily business. It also provided the opportunity to add a new manhole cover to our growing collection!

Cathedral seen across the lake, Ratzeburg

12th century cathedral, Ratzeburg

Manhole cover, Ratzeburg

We mentioned Ian had distant links with this area through his mother. Browsing the phonebook at the last campsite he discovered someone he met back in the 1960s listed and determined to revisit the tiny village of Tremsbüttel to see if he recognised anything. The village lies in a remote area of open countryside north of Hamburg. In the 1920s when Ian's mum was here it must have been a very lonely place indeed. As soon as we reached the village Ian recognised the house though many of the surrounding buildings were more recent.

The former farmhouse where Ian stayed, Tremsbüttel

A very friendly lady answered Ian's knock at the door and didn't seem in the least phased by his strange tale. She called her father-in-law and he and Ian chatted about the family and what became of each member. Ian says he could immediately recognise the man he had known so long ago. Not so with him. He couldn't remember Ian at all, but then Ian was only about 15 at the time! We have learnt that his younger sister, who had stayed with Ian's family in England, now lives in Berlin, so there is no chance of meeting her as we have passed well away from that area now. There are other links further north from here so we will perhaps look in on the village of Niebüll near to where his mother lived for several months and where Ian spent several childhood holidays.

Having said goodbye and that we'd pop in again next time we were passing in another forty years we explored the pretty village with its thatched brick cottages, symmetrically laid out herb gardens, village pond and the castle. This is set in its own grounds and is now a privately run hotel. We walked into the gardens and up to the front door where a very nice young lady happy accepted Ian's statement that he was tracing his past and told us we could go inside and wander around. Apparently the place was being used today by North German Television who is making a melodrama with Dracula-type characters and the castle provides the perfect setting! We wandered from room to room, each furnished with huge dressers, tables, mirrors, vases and long case clocks. Go upstairs as well, we were told. On the wide staircase were two carved and painted angels beneath the large stained glass window and at the top a coat of armour. Pushing at a half open door we entered a room in deep shadow where the blinds had been drawn. Reflected in the mirror of the dressing table was the face of Dracula himself, grinning savagely as he checked that his fangs were sufficiently bloody for the forthcoming scene about to be shot! We had accidentally stumbled into his dressing and make-up room. We retreated hastily back downstairs and out through the main doors to the castle making good our escape before we got offered parts as extras in the production!

Thatched brick cottage with herb garden, Tremsbüttel

Castle, Tremsbüttel

Castle interior, Tremsbüttel

Castle interior, upstairs landing, Tremsbüttel

After a picnic by the pond we left Tremsbüttel and will almost certainly never return. Our visit had turned out to be far more interesting than we could possibly have imagined. Ian's greatest regret is that he cannot tell his mum about is. She would have been highly amused and delighted by the whole affair.

Temperatures rose well into the 30s this afternoon and we stopped at the town of Kaltenkirchen to cool off with ice creams. Towns are all small and many kilometres apart north of Hamburg and we have given up trying to find internet access for the time being. Realising that any campsites would be on the coast, that time was pressing and we still had a considerable distance to drive we took the motorway. Traffic is so sparse one wonders why they need a motorway but it does provide the area with fast access to the port of Kiel. In no time we had reached the edge of Büsum where we found this campsite. They laughed when we asked if there was any shade but we do have a low hedge which, together with shade from Modestine herself, stopped us from frying this evening. People in tents, many having arrived by bicycle or motorbike, were less fortunate. We do not fancy staying here during the day tomorrow so will be forced to move on. At this rate we will be in Denmark in a day or so but really would prefer to explore around here first.

In all honesty the landscape here is rather boring, just burned yellow grass for ever and flat polder land. Its redeeming feature for us is the gentle breeze that has been blowing across as we drove north. Apart from the occasional hamlet of brick houses the only things to break the monotony of the landscape are the windmills. Not traditional ones unfortunately but the tall slender, three-armed giants who stand around in clusters doing gymnastic twirling as they generate electricity.

Wind turbines near Büsum

This evening we went for a walk to watch the sunset over the North Sea. As we said, we last paddled in the Adriatic. This evening we did so in the North Sea! There was a pleasure in seeing the sea again but it seems so very far away with just shallow mud full of cockles stretching away into the far distance. The sun though was glorious as it sank below the horizon. And jolly glad we were to see it go! At 10pm it is still 25 degrees but that feels really cool after the heat of the day.

Our first view of the North Sea, Büsum

Who says the Germans always get the best places by the sea? Büsum

Watching the sun go down, Büsum

The number of showers on this site is quite inadequate. It's nearly midnight and Ian's just returned looking cool and clean so while he sorts out today's photos, I'm off to try my luck before the early morning rush arrives! At least at this time of the night moving around is reasonably comfortable.

Ian has just been speculating whether the town of Büsum should be twinned with Brest! Time for sleep before any more bright ideas occur to him.

Thursday 27th July 2006, Husum, on the North Sea, Schleswig-Holstein
This morning we woke in metaphysical mood to yet another day of dazzling sunlight. "Busy old fool, unruly Sun. Why must thou thus through windows and through curtains peer on us?"

At breakfast, where we cowered from the heat between the hedge and Modestine's flank, seeking shade, we were joined by a large hare! We are not accustomed to seeing them at such close quarters but it was driven to such tame behaviour by the desire for the few blades of grass next to the hedge not yet scorched the pale yellow of the Friesian countryside. Later, we saw a hare that had been hit by a passing car, lying dead on the roadside. As Ian said, still in metaphysical mood, "Hare today and gone tomorrow".

Hare today, Büsum

This morning we explored this area of North Friesland. Many place-names around here end in Koog which is the Friesian term for Polder. At the estuary of the river Eider a row of massive sluices has been constructed to limit the flow of water passing up and down during high tides or river floods. This proved a very interesting visit and explained a lot about how the area is gradually drained and reclaimed. Work on the flood prevention barrier – the Eidersperrwerk - was completed in 1973 after serious flooding in1962. It also provides a bridge that enables cars and bicycles to cross the estuary quickly and conveniently without the necessity of a five kilometre detour. While we were there the road was raised to permit a vessel to pass up the estuary and the iron sluice-gates came down to reduce the inward flow of the incoming tide. It is an impressive piece of engineering work and has greatly reduced storm and flood damage to crops and farmlands since its installation.

Sluice gates, Eidersperrwerk

It was very enjoyable for us to potter around on the muddy beach amidst the mussels and cockles at the water's edge, listening to the plaintive cry of the herring gulls, the sharp scream of the terns and the sounds of the estuary wading birds. There is a great pleasure in the familiar smells and sounds of Europe's more northern sea waters after so long on the soft sands of the Mediterranean. The most appreciated thing though, was the soft breeze that disguised just how hot it has been today.

We drove on to Sankt Peter Ording on Eiderstedt, a peninsula which was once an island but has now been joined to the mainland by reclamation of land. This is a small village with a number of houses typical of the area, built in red brick and often thatched. Having struggled through its pretty little streets in heat that made us both feel unwell, we took refuge in the cool of the church. This was a simple building with blue painted pews and an interesting locally carved 17th century wooden altar screen.

Cottage in Sankt Peter Ording

Traditional 18th century farmhouse, now a museum, Sankt Peter Ording

Reredos in the church, Sankt Peter Ording

Our onward route carried us through a bleached landscape of crops and stubble. We passed a number of Haubarge - typical low farmhouses with massive thatched roofs, often set in clumps of trees for shelter. They stand isolated amidst the endless flat landscape, which is sometimes below sea level, with dykes providing protection from possible flooding from sea and rivers.

Our next stop was Friedrichstadt, founded by Dutch refugees on land granted by Duke Friedrich III of Holstein in 1621. This turned out to be a little corner of Holland! It was more Dutch than many typical towns to be found in Holland. There are canals and terraces of little brick houses with decorated gables. The market square is lined with large, tall buildings with mansard roofs and gables and the shops are straight from Delft with window displays of blue and white pottery, ceramic windmills and even clogs! For lunch we tried the typical local fare – Bismark herrings and onions in a roll with glasses of chilled water. We found the empty church where we sat exhausted as the cool air wrapped around us. Again the feel was very Dutch and there was an ornately decorated and carved 17th century pulpit in the church with inscriptions in Dutch.

Gabled houses on the market square, Friedrichstadt

Residential street, Friedrichstadt

Shop window with Delft ceramics, Friedrichstadt

It was too uncomfortable to enjoy looking around. Given the choice we would not be doing any of this on such a day, but we have no choice. We are staying on flat treeless campsites without a speck of shade during the day where temperatures are up into the forties. We do not even have an awning for Modestine so we have to drive to get any breeze and take shelter wherever we can find it. So often the streets have no shade at all and we have taken to measuring the distance from one patch of shadow to the next before setting off, as fast as we can between the two points! It is the hardest and most difficult time we have had to cope with. No matter which direction we take from here, there does not look any likelihood of improvement. We do not know how we are going to survive the next few weeks. On the way back to Modestine we sat on the bank of the canal and soaked ourselves in water. Seconds later we were dry and as hot as ever.

Canal in Friedrichstadt

At Husum we eventually found an internet place. It felt like a sauna in there. It was expensive and we were unable to load the images we needed properly. It's the second time we have tried to load them for that particular blog. It is all so frustrating. Internet places are few and far between up here. It could be days before we have another opportunity.

We were too hot and sticky to explore the town but found a campsite nearby so can return tomorrow. It is nearly midnight and only now is the temperature becoming bearable. By 6am we will have started the next day of torment.

We do not wish to sound negative about the area of Friesland. We have just not been able to do it full justice and the last thing we feel like doing at night when it is so close is sorting out pictures and writing the blog. In cooler weather the area offers lots of interesting activities from sailing and canoeing to cycling, swimming, riding and sand yachting. There are numerous pretty villages and some beautiful rural churches. The vernacular architecture is picturesque and the landscape charged with character. High dykes protect the fields from the sea and the sparse yellow grass along the top is browsed by sheep, much as it is on the Marshes of Romney, Camber and Dymchurch.

It is sometimes difficult to believe we are still in Germany here in Schleswig-Holstein. It is so very different from either Bavaria, Saxony or any of the other states we have visited on our travels. It is right on the border with Denmark and the local diet certainly reflects this with restaurants selling all kinds of north sea fish, crabs and eels prepared in all sorts of ways – smoked, baked, pickled and raw. The buildings in the towns and villages look very Dutch while out in the countryside with its canals, reed beds, wheat fields, vegetable gardens full of cabbages and carrots and huge thatched farmsteads you can imagine yourself in Norfolk or Suffolk or indeed any of the low-lying counties of south eastern England.