August 8, 2013
Day 21: Korso to Roskilde
The gravelly bit where we were intended to put our tent (yes, the campsite rules specified all setbacks for your tent construction!) proved too hard for Dodie to get her pegs in. So at the risk of getting in trouble with some sort of camping zoning inspector, she put us three feet to one side. In the night, it rained 28mm and the gravel pad turned into a lake. That would have been big trouble. As it was, an arm of the lake reached out to us, and our always rather dodgy tent floor admitted the arm to under our sleeping pads. This surprise was coupled with the fact that though we had only turned in at midnight, Dodie inexplicably set the alarm for 5:30. That made for very bleary eyed campers wielding the mops.
The 5:30 timing had a good side, because at 5:30 it had stopped raining. That allowed us to pack up. After that, it started raining again.
Undaunted, except for being sleepy, we set off for a look at Korsor. Korsor had a working harbour rather than a picturesque one. In the town were many old and interesting buildings, but it seemed little had been done to maintain and restore them. We know it is a tradeoff and a problem. If you promote tourism, and put shops and cafes in the historic buildings, you may destroy the orignal feeling of the place. However, if you do nothing, the place will fall to pieces. Korsor did not appear to be doing much.
We did find a bakery in Korsor. Inside we found a stress on those long "danish" concoctions, with round ones in there as well. We bought three round ones. The analysis: they were tasty, but instead of the butter normally used to produce the flaky pastry, they seem to have used oil. so the pastry was not as high as it could be, and it had an oily after effect. Because of this, we had to give a failing grade. That fail is just for the bakery itself, not the concept of Danish in Denmark. We will need to do a lot more research to make a final determination!
We now headed diagonally across the island (called Zeeland) in the direction of Copenhagen, or as they write it here Kobenhavn). This began for us what was essentially just a long slog. First off, again, there was little in terms of dedicated bbike path. Rather, bikes were directed to paved shoulders beside often quite heavy traffic. The countryside was comprised of rolling grain fields, and the buildings rather plain. So there was not a lot of visual stimulation as we plodded over hill and dale beside the highways. We had hoped to reach Roskilde, but at both Slagelse and Ringsted, the major towns along the way, we ran into the same phenomenon. In the town, the highway you have been following suddenly becomes banned to bikes. You then have the option of following a numbered bike route that seems to go the right way. However the routes are not tagged with town destinations, so it's a gamble. In both towns, we gambled and lost quite a bit before we cracked each puzzle. What a pain. In Ringsted, for example, we lost 10 km and 2 hours!
The GPS in the tablet helped a bit with route finding, but it's hard to use in the rain and with no bracket to hold it where it can be seen. Also, there is a distinction between legal for bikes and safe for bikes. So when the tablet would plot us a supposed bike route through town, it often tried to send us on roads that we did not consider safe.
All this stuff about riding on road shoulders, getting kicked off unsafe roads, and mistrusting safety on other roads, are all hallmarks of North American cycling. This had us wondering what happened to our European cycle heaven adventure.
We did have two fun things in the day. For the first, we decided to follow a bike route sign and found ourselves way back somewhere. What was so great was that this place had a literal forest of large cherry trees, and they were dripping with ripe cherries. Just for research purposes, of course, we tried some out. They were good, but they were sour cherries. Fortunately we made a wrong turn and arrived at the farmer's door. He sold us some sweet cherries and put us in the right direction. The cherries were those almost black kind and fully ripe - really good. Because of the language barrier, though, we did not ask about how or if they would harvest what looked like a million pounds of sour cherries, ready right now!
The second interesting thing was a small church - at Slaglille. This was built in the 12th century and has a number of frescoes. Strangely, some of these were covered up when the church was enlarged. What mainly caught our interest, though, was a prominently featured painting of Jesus. This Jesus looks like a red haired Viking. If the people would like a probably more accurate representation, they should look at any picture of me in this blog!
We finally found a way onto highway 14, the road to Roskilde, but by then we were too beat and the hour too late to make it. We bailed not very far out of Ringsted at a campsite that the tablet found. Best of all, they had cabins, and we grabbed one. Now we will be able to dry out stuff that got drenched in last night's rains.
We feel like Denmark is giving us a bit of hard time, with traffic, bike paths, and direction signs (or not), not too much grocery, bakery, or roadside services, and scenery that while pleasant, can be matched in most other places. Tomorrow we should reach Copenhagen, and our minds are still open. We are ready to be pleasantly impressed.
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Today's ride: 78 km (48 miles)
Total: 1,466 km (910 miles)
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