Norway to Luxembourg

From Oslo we travelled down Norway to Kristiansand where we took the ferry back to Denmark. We had seen a programme about the northern tip of Denmark where the North Sea meets the Baltic Sea so we had to have a look. This map is on the beach at Grenen.

Here I am looking at the two seas meeting.

From Grenen we moved down to Aarhus, Denmark's second city.

The picture below shows one of the many houses we saw that had this type of thatch.

After Aarhus we stayed in Aabenraa before finally leaving Denmark.

Before moving across industrialized Germany we thought we'd visit the coast. I think Scharbeutz must be a well kept secret. It is a lovely seaside town - it even has donkey rides on the beach.

The woven wicker seats on the beach were everywhere, people even had them on their balconies and in gardens. Riding along the coast there were plenty of lovely holiday homes.

From Scharbeutz we travelled to Hamelin. It is the prettiest medieval town (with lots of salt dough rats). We rode into town on our bikes.

Here are some of the well painted buildings.

After Hamelin we left Germany and drove into Luxembourg. We stayed just outside the capital which meant we could ride in along the river. To reach the upper town we had to go in a bike lift.

From here we will move through Belgium and into France, back to Calais before returning home.

Stockholm to Oslo, Norway

We made it to our northernmost destination - Oslo. It was a trip of 2134 miles and took three weeks and four days.

The roads remained empty but the landscape did change as we moved west. There was still lots of forest, with the elk proof fence alongside all motorways but it gradually became more hilly. In fact whilst driving through Norway we drove through mountains and past ski slopes.

Norway did not seem to have as many lakes as we saw in Sweden but the views were still amazing. The top left picture is me enjoying an evening drink on the beach (taken from next to the van).

These are some of the things we saw on the journey from Stockholm to Oslo.

As with the other cities Oslo had some interesting buildings - there was much more of a mixture of styles, including an area with very modern high rise buildings. The traffic was the worst that we had seen. As well as the many cyclists there were also lots of people on 'landskis' - small skis on wheels. I can only assume people are preparing for the snow.

Of course we found another Viking museum. This time it was three boats and items that had been found in burial mounds. Again the details were fantastic and I'm sure there will be a series of work based on the Viking decoration.

Stockholm

You may have noticed that I quite like buildings - well Stockholm wins. It has the most amazing variety of buildings. We spent two days cycling round the city.

I love the variety of roof tops.The old city was very lovely too, all dark cobbled streets.

We went to the VASA museum which contains the resurrected ship from the 17th century. 98% of the ship is original. The preservation processes have destroyed the original colours but extensive research has found evidence of the colours and they have produced reproductions.

The pictures above are of the actual ship. The ones below are reproductions - sculptures are life size but the ship is a model.

These are the pigments that were used to paint the ship.

The ship sank on its maiden voyage and remained undisturbed for over 300 years. As well as lots of equipment quite a lot of clothing and footwear was found, even some of the sails were still folded up.

Boots and shoes

Remains of the main sail.

Sweden - Malmo to Stockholm

The only way to get from Denmark to Sweden if you don't want to go on a ferry is across the Oresund bridge. So we crossed and stopped briefly in Malmo for a snack.

We decided that where possible we would travel across country rather than just race up the motorways. However these were not exactly busy - this is the usual amount of traffic. You can see the trees are changing colour and although it is sunny the temperature is in single figures. Driving through Sweden is really beautiful, lovely forests, pretty houses and churches.

We drove to a campsite at Almhult and stayed near a lovely lake.

Almhult is where the first Ikea was born and so we had to go and visit it. There is an Ikea hotel, their Cultural Centre where they train all their management - basically it is a small Ikea town. I bought some fabric - each roll had 50 squares of 20cm x 20cm.

From Almhult we travelled up to Jonkoping on the edge of lake Vattern, the second largest lake in Sweden, calling in at an Elk sanctuary on the way. We had passed loads of warning signs on the road. Apparently over 4,000 are killed on the roads every year and they usually destroy the car.

After Jonkoping we moved up the lake to a place called Granna - famous for its candy. It looked just like our striped peppermint rock

On our travels we saw more windmills.

We also saw lots of lovely houses.

There are also very grand houses.

Here are a selection of photos featuring the van - the first is a view from where we spent the night in Nykoping (you can just see a hare on the grass), the second is the van hiding in the countryside and the third is in a seaside town called Trosa.

We are now on the Baltic Sea coast and moving up to Stockholm.

Copenhagen via Kerteminde

Before leaving Bork Havn I went back to the Viking village to find out about the 'knitting'. It is actually called Naelebinding and predates both knitting and crochet. It is created with a single needle and only short lengths of yarn. Having acquired some wool the next task will be to try and master this technique.

We drove up the west side of Ringkobing Fjord, calling in at the entrance to the fjord Hvind Sande. There was a market there, similar to a 'flea market' and I found these wonderful plaited reed shoes.

We also managed to get some more smoked eel - here is my lunch for that day.

We then drove eastwards from Jutland to another island called Fyn where we stayed in the marina at Kerteminde. Here you can see the van hiding behind the harbourmaster's hut.

As it is a marina it had loads of beautiful boats but I preferred the older fishing boats.

Kerteminde also had lovely buildings

 Leaving Kerteminde we drove across a wonderful suspension bridge 'Storebeltsvej' from Nyborg to Korsor and from then on to Copenhagen.

We went to a wonderful exhibition in the National Museum (which was free)

 From top left: reproduction clothing for a chieftain and his wife. The second picture shows a blouse and cord skirt found in a burial site. Because everything has been preserved in bogs you can see the actual clothing - it was not possible to take photos of these as the lighting was very low. Vikings decorated stones to give information, there were some lovely examples in the museum and the last picture shows a golden crucifix.

Again Copenhagen had some beautiful buildings, some reminiscent of Amsterdam.

We also visited Christiania, an independent state within the city but were not allowed to take photographs.

There were some amazing spires and domes to be seen ...

... and of course, we saw the Little Mermaid.