Day 14: Bavnehøj to Vordingborg

July 17, 2023

Kevin had a high fever through the night and it wasn’t the most restful night for any of us. He was still running a high fever in the morning and we just wanted to get him somewhere more comfortable to recover. He slept through much of the morning and was whiny when he wasn’t asleep, apart from when I took him to see the horses in a nearby field. I also showed him the machines in the “old” gravel pit, which as we suspected were still in use and we had the noise of these machines as the backdrop to our morning at the shelter.

We had organised a cabin to stay at in the next big town of Vordingborg. Kevin slept the whole way there in the trailer, most of which looked like this:

Apart from the last bit, when we crossed a very long bridge connecting Falster with Sjaelland (Zealand in English), the large Danish island where Copenhagen is situated. I had cycled across this bridge at the start of my long bike journey in 2013 and again with Dea on our way to Copenhagen in 2016 and on both occasions I had noticed the large number of spiders living in the railings of the bridge. We had therefore christened this bridge “spider bridge”.

But as we approached it this time there were lots of road works to navigate and we could see a new bridge being built a little to the west. Amazing to see what humans can engineer and probably about time too, as spider bridge is very long, narrow and a bit nerve wracking in the sort of high winds we had today. There was no sign of the spiders either, most of them seemed to have completely disappeared. I’m sure there is a sad story in there about the loss of insect populations, although I prefer to just imagine they are all busy migrating over towards the new bridge.

Crossing the artist formerly known as spider bridge again made me think back about the time when I started my journey and I realised that the tenth anniversary of my leaving from Paris had only just passed. In fact I had cycled away from the Eiffel Tower around midday on the 15th of July 2013. Two days earlier, around midday on the 15th of July 2023, we had been cycling away from the family high school. It was another coincidence to go with that Dea and I had moved into our apartment in Denmark together around midday on the 15th of July 2020. The first time I had been setting off on a great adventure alone, seven years on I was settling down with my girl, and another three years on and here we are having another great adventure as a family.

We made it across the bridge to Vordingborg and to our campsite, where we were shown to our cabin. It was a cosy little cabin with space for Kevin to sleep on a mattress on the floor, which he did for most of the rest of the day. It was a strange campsite - pretty rundown and apparently soon to be sold, there were few guests. July is holiday season in Denmark and most campsites are packed. Not this one. But being on the cycle route it was popular with cyclists. I counted 11 tents that looked like they belonged to cyclists, almost as many as there were caravans. It almost made us feel a bit soft renting a cabin, but Kevin’s needs came first of course. By the end of the day his fever had come down and he was starting to get back to himself. Dea and myself, however, were starting to feel sick ourselves. We decided we’d better stay another day.

Maybe the view has something to do with it.

Today's ride: 18 km (11 miles)
Total: 322 km (200 miles)

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