August 19, 2015
Borstahausen, Sweden: Mr Grumpy rides again
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LIKE a parachutist who can't find the rip cord, I had uncertain feelings about this morning. I was on the road at dawn, but only because I slept fitfully. At four, I was begging the sun to get on with it.
Well, here outside Copenhagen live conscientious people. They believe it a sin to lie in beyond sunrise. They were all up and driving even earlier than I was. Five kilometres of peace and then Dane pain.
I felt sluggish from the start and I knew this wasn't going to be a happy day. What I didn't know was that by the afternoon I would be feigning even greater distress to escape a manically enthusiastic Pole. But I'll get to him in a moment.
There's a splendid bridge from Copenhagen to Sweden. But even in two countries kind to cyclists, nobody thought it wise to give it a bike lane. The planners will tell you why. Me, I don't know. Maybe they thought it would be dangerously windy up there. But where's the wind going to blow you on a fenced bikeway?
Well, what you have to do instead is ride 50 kilometres north, half of it past houses, restaurants and tyre-fitting bays, to get to a ferry. Because there's not even a sea crossing from Copenhagen.
I tried coffee and buns at a garage after only 10 kilometres. I rode further and tried closing my eyes on a bench where self-important teenagers in yellow vests were stopping traffic for younger children to get to school. I came across many parents taking their children to school not by car but by bike. Often there were fathers on their way to work with children beside them.
But none of this made any difference. There are days when you resign yourself to kicking puppies and stealing flowers, and this was going to be one of them.
I know now that I needed food. What I didn't feel then was hungry. There was some relief when I bought a sandwich and a huge ice cream of funfair subtlety in the last hour. And I felt cheered up a little when I left the main road and zigzagged through quiet villages beside the water. But things weren't going well.
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And then I made a stupid decision. I got to Helsingor, where the ferries run 70 times a day to Sweden, and realised that perhaps I hadn't been wise to let my stock of Danish crowns dwindle to a handful. I wouldn't need them in Sweden and banks aren't quick to take coins rather than notes.
On the other hand, I didn't want to take out a load more money to buy food, only to change it into Swedish crowns less than an hour later. So I didn't eat. The fact that I'd have lost maybe all of €3 in commission and wasted coins didn't come into it. A brain doesn't work well when it's deprived of sugar.
I was in no mood, then, to meet a fellow cyclist at the ramp for the ferry. Oh, sure, it was good to see him. But his proper place in life right then was to nod politely and say nothing.
Instead, he burst into life like a car salesman and said: "Hi! What language do you want to speak?"
I should have suggested mime.
He was young, maybe 20, with boot-brush bristle on his chin. He had a yellow jacket undone at the front and a bike with panniers undone everywhere. Things stuck out of his bags. Things stuck out of his pockets.
He was especially excited that I was going to Poland.
"So am I," he enthused. "I'm Polish. When we get on the boat, I'll show you all the best roads to ride and maybe we can ride them together."
From politeness, I asked how far he rode each day.
"Oh, usually 150," he said. "But I've done 200 some days."
That explained why he hadn't had time to pack his panniers neatly.
For some reason we got separated on the car deck when we stowed our bikes. The main reason was that I made sure we would be. The ferry wasn't big but there were places to hide. I found a bench, sat on it, closed my eyes and pretended I'd died.
He said afterwards that he'd come to look for me, with his maps, but hadn't found me. I said truthfully that I hadn't seen him. Truthfully because I had my eyes shut.
There was no avoiding him when we docked. He kept up a stream of enthusiastic chatter as we rode into Sweden.
"Which way shall we go?" he said, as though I'd have any say in it. "We", you notice.
"To a hotel," I said.
"Why?"
"Because I feel ill."
I didn't but I'd get mentally ill if I stayed with him much longer. I began to ride away.
"Wait!" he called. "I've got a guide book to all the places to stay in the whole of Europe."
I thanked him, said I was sure I would manage, watched which way he was going and went in another. Any direction at all. And then I had a whopping big meal, felt far better, rode 35km down through part of Sweden with the sea on my right, and stopped at an enormous commercial campground. It was inordinately expensive but there were no Polish cyclists there.
Today's ride: 93 km (58 miles)
Total: 4,215 km (2,618 miles)
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