Travel

Nordkapp - Welcome to Copenhagen…

I was wondering last night when I got to the rather oddly cheap hotel why all the rooms were in various scattered buildings joined together with tunnels, it seems to be an old air force base, and it still had some old Saab Draken’s scattered around. The other oddity I couldn’t work out was why the hotel was selling Koenigsegg memorabilia and models..it turned out the factory was around the back of old base! Didn’t see any cars, but did wonder over night what was with all the boy racers making such a row in somewhere so remote! But a 4 star room for £42, wasn’t going to turn it down when I saw it.

The ride to the port was pretty flat and very little and which was nice as it followed the coast pretty closely. Being a Saturday breakfast was later so I had a later start. I was fighting lows before 12 so stopped off 6km outside of Helsingborg (town with the ferry) to grab some lunch and while at it pay a visit to a bike shop. It’s odd, bikes everywhere but no shops. Only seen three and one of those was someone running a workshop out of his garage. Where do all these bike come from over here?! Anyhow, I paid a visit to nose around as you do. They had a good selection of bikes, but again very few of the hub geared Dutch style things that are everywhere. The puzzle remains!

The port had a bike lane and it cost £4.90 for a bike on the ferry. The huge 6km crossing down on under 30mins and welcome to Denmark!

The way Denmark has it’s roundabouts done is great. They all have an outer ring for bikes, even mini roundabouts, works like a charm with the bikes having priority. The route to Copenhagen was on lots of back roads or properly made cycle path…50km of it. Along the coast, rolling through some amazing forested paths. It was stunning. Some steep climbs on the forested parts, so steep that on a few of them I encountered people on the normal Dutch style bikes used mostly pushing up them. Maybe some snags in the infrastructure or people’s choices of bikes.

The final 8km into Copenhagen was a bit of a stop start hell due to the traffic lights. I was also getting a little irritated by this hipster on an eBike, flat cap and everything. Every traffic light stop he forced himself to the front, then took off quick and then get dropped as he hit the speed limiter. Over and over he did it, not sure if it was the irrigation, the fact my BG’s were sub 3, or both but I really just got fed up and stuck it in the big ring and took off.

Copenhagen is very spacious and not very built up. It seems to have quite an industrial base in it as well with smoke stacks and the likes lining the coast. Some interesting parts like the funfair in the middle and random climbing walls on the sides of buildings. The brick work in style of the old buildings is great but I’ll get to those tomorrow. I’ve a rest day on Sunday to go explore with, and on Monday I’ve an appointment with some people who make insulin, so that should be an interesting day also.