Day 21 part 2. Smidie to Randers then to Kolding by train.
We stopped to do groceries at an Aldi I think in Hadsund and on exiting the town we lost the route 5 for a while. The route we wanted to take was not signposted and our first attempt to find it took us west along the fjord rather than south along the coast. After around ten minutes of irritation we ended up on a very busy main road, the traffic running along it a full speed. The road was straight but had some climbs so we got separated pretty quickly.
After a while I stopped at a lay-by and waited for Damae to turn up. As I waited a touring cyclist whizzed past apparently enjoying the downhill section. We were to bump into him a little later on.
Looking at the map we decided to look for a quieter road parallel to the main road and shortly afterwards found one, and the coastal route again. A little further up we bumped into the touring cyclist who turned out to be called Finn. He was heading to Grena for a week long Buddhist course. His home base was Aalborg and he invited us to drop in the next time we were in this part of Denmark.
He was a somewhat stronger cyclist than we were and we tried to keep up with him but he was going consistently two kilometers an hour faster than we would have been. Eventually with our energies waning we parted company just after a ferry. We stopped to eat just after the ferry, and were plagued by wasps yet again. The wasp problem was now making both of us rather grumpy. We looked at our maps and decided that Grena was out of the question so decided to head to Randers and take a train from there to Kolding. The stop was not the least bit restful and we headed off again on our way.
The rolling countryside worked against us as did the wind. I am sure that the restless night in Smidie did not help us either. We took another ferry back to the mainland as we worked out at one stop that to stay on our side would add around five to ten kilometers to our journey. The ferry was lovely and on the other side we got to sit down for a few minutes without being completely surrounded by wasps.
Getting going again after this stop was particularly hard. As usual in all countries except the Netherlands you go down to water. So now we had to go up. The roads were quiet and even though the inclines were not terribly taxing we were now struggling. We passed large old farm houses and farm complexes surrounded by well made stone walls, reminiscent of buildings in the open air museum in Århus. Running along the shoreline for most of the way it was then with some relief that we reached Randers.
We came in through the centre of town to find a pleasing bustling town, with plenty of older nicely finished stone buildings. I made a mental note to visit it properly some time. Damae decided to nip into a hotel to ask for directions to the train station, which she achieved very quickly and efficiently. We found the way easily and discovered that Randers has a big blues and roots music festival which was located on the edge of town.