It is a still and heavy heat outside as I write this. 40 degrees centigrade, which is north of 100 Fahrenheit and not a whiff of air conditioning to be found in this apartment. No solace in fans either. We wake up with the sun, have our breakfast, sleep the whole day and live at night. And this whole time I find myself daydreaming of my months in the far north where I could count the warm days on one hand.
I don't dabble in hyperbole, it really is bad here in Rennes. They say that yesterday was probably the hottest day ever in France, and the summer is still young. So with these quiet days I have plenty of time to tell you about the week that I spent with Camille backpacking through Denmark- yes, a much cooler place than this sun-drenched suburb I where I write to you from now.
To recap my hectic weeks of travel: I left Östersund on June 1st and flew to Amsterdam, and took my usual train to Middelburg to drop off my bags and catch up with old friends. On the 4th I went to Rennes and Camille by overnight bus, where I had another short break before we began our safari to Denmark. I've dubbed this "the summer of FlixBus" after our favorite ultra low cost bus line. In total we've spent more than 70 hours in trains and busses in the last two weeks, which when said that way sounds rather inhumane. Anyways. We left on Monday the 8th, and our journey took us from Rennes to Paris, then Berlin the next morning. The final leg brough us to Aalborg, in north Jutland, at 20.30 on Tuesday night. Such things you can only do when you're young...
Luckily the Nordic sun is out until 22.30 this time of year so we still had time to walk through the city to a pretty gnarly campsite on an island. We were the only ones on the ferry out there and quickly found our campsite, a cluster of shelters in a little forest with friendly cats. This was badly needed after the 34 hours of bus travel! We ate some quinoa and slept very, very well.
The next morning we broke camp at 11.00, had a swim and a shower at the city pool, did some groceries and took a train north to Skagen, the very northern tip of Denmark where we would begin our walking. This is where the North Sea mixes with the Baltic, at the sand-spit called Grenen. It's mostly a symbolic spot, but you really can see the waves clash and boil! We walked a long 8km to quite a nice camp spot in a forest in the dunes, again with these classic shelters which really were the hallmark of this trip.
For the next few days we walked south and west, following the coast to Hirtshals. Truth be told there were some crummy moments, long straight roads, heavy rain in an open field, blasting wind. But somehow the camp spots made up for this! They were always amazing, in a mossy forest, isolated, sometimes luxurious with toilets and running water.
From Hirtshals (which was actually quite a crappy town; mostly a port for ferries and fishing. We took a very cheap coffee in a pub where people were smoking indoors. The side of this country you don't see!) we headed back to Aalborg by train, then out west to Thisted. This is a wilder corner of the country, home to Thy National Park. Pronounced just like the letter T, ignore the H and Y. We learned this from a schoolteacher who was the first to oblige us when we did some hitchhiking. Unfortunately my sleeping mat did not leave his Tesla when we were dropped off by some crystal-clear lakes near the coast- I didn't strap it to the bag tight enough! So he'll be very happy to find this in the back of his car, and I had to make do by sleeping on the ground for three nights. Ahhhhh....
Thy was excellent despite this! Certainly the most beautiful place we visited on the trip. The dunes are tall, the spaces wide and windy, the forests dark and green. We walked south through Klitmøller and Vorupør, two surf towns nestled in the dunes. They call the place "cold Hawaii" and the comparison goes a long ways. This was also where some of the craziest events happened to us:
It was the end of quite a long day; at least 15km walking under skies threatening rain. At last we made it to a camp spot; and a pretty good one at that! We couldn't be bothered to walk the final 3km to Vorupør, so we tried hitchhiking again. No problem at all getting a ride- a kind theater director from Thisted brought us right to the shops! We also took an excellent coffee at the Break cafe and stayed until closing time, sitting on something comfortable for the first time that day. However, the weather was only deteriorating into more wind and rain while we sat sipping americanos...
We can thank our lucky stars the owner of the place took pity on us and drove us down the road a ways so we wouldn't have to walk in the rain! Certainly we could have, but that would've been the difference between a tough day and a terrible one. She was seriously the loveliest person we met in Denmark- and she gave us a big bottle of beer too! We ate a lot of sweets that night and watched the rain, feeling very lucky and very thankful.
There are a thousand renowned backpacking destinations and I'd bet north Denmark doesn't make many lists. (silver lining: no competition for camp spots, solitude every night, etc.) Curiously we saw perhaps five other people our age during the 9 days of camping we did- the region is exceptionally popular with the retired German crowd. But despite that we made a great trip out of it!
Our last night was in Aarhus, Denmark's second city, which to me had to vibe of a smaller Stockholm. Here I surprised Camille with an Airbnb, because nine nights straight of camping is madness before round two of FlixBus. We had a proper shower for the first time, did our laundry, and cooked a very nice diner which we ate on the terrace. Complete with the beer which we got from our friend in Vorupør! It was the best sleep I can remember for a long time.
The last stop on this crazy tour was Hamburg. Our bus (without air conditioning, perhaps a little foreshadowing there!) departed Aarhus on Friday the 19th at 10:00 sharp, and by the early afternoon we were out and about in what is one of the nicer cities in Germany. It was, however, a warm day, and we were tired and not exactly looking forwards to another overnight bus. So we took an ice cream in the park, walked around for too long, and ate fancy salads that were five euros too expensive. Not such a bad time here but we were quite exhausted and sweaty by the end of it.
And so, we find ourselves back in Rennes in this infernal heat. And actually packing for our next adventure, two weeks in Ireland with friends from Östersund guided by Adam in his van. With luck I'll be able to find some time to write about these adventures, stay tuned for these!
P.S. as you can see I'm publishing this about two months later; there was in fact no time for writing on this van trip. So now I play catch-up in the lovely air-conditioned library here in Middelburg. (it's very hot here too. Ah European weather! And boy do I have content to write about now...)
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading about your travels and seeing photos of your journey through Denmark with Camille. You are both very adventurous! 😁💕🙏