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Day 3. Ribe to Nymindegab.

Distance 100km Average 17.3km/h.

The day started early for us before eight. Although damp from the rain in the night the sun greeted us as we got up and out. Before lunch we would experience a success tainted by a failure and then a victory in the face of adversity (and that was all before we got 10km from Ribe).

We hit the bike shop as it was opening and by eleven the new wheel had been fitted and we were back on the trail. We left Ribe via the centre and realised that it was quite a nice place to visit again sometime. Out of the shelter of the town we discovered that the wind was good, the weather warm albeit a little overcast. We were back in the rhythm and it felt good.

That is until Damae's tyre went down quickly only eight kilometres out of Ribe. Oh well I thought these things can happen, and we took the bags of Damae's bike and flipped it over. On removing the inner tube I discovered that some pillock at Denmark's biggest cycle shop had forgotten to put a rim tape on the new wheel he had just fitted to Damae's bike. I was somewhat dischuffed, and Damae headed off back to the shop.

As I was calming down a Danish lady who (like my own mother) had spent most of her live living in another country, stopped to chat. She was cycling for the day with her Swiss husband back for a short holiday. We chatted about this and that and the cycle shop. The dialect of German her husband spoke was curious indeed. Some of it I could get but fortunately he also spoke and understood Hoch Deutsch so we could communicate a little. I thought about my own mother and how it must have been to, like this lady leave a place she loved for someone she loved.

After what seemed an eternity sitting in that flat landscape with only the Ribe Church spires on one side and the sea dyke on the other for relief, a car arrived with a bike sticking out of the boot. A lovely lady named Ceciel had given Damae a lift back from the bike shop, after the owners were not interested in helping any further.

Ceciel, like Damae, was also a teacher and a cycle-tourer. She was in a terrible hurry and I think the short chat we had with her was longer than she had time for. Still a big thank you to her whoever she is. With our faith in the peoples of Denmark restored, we had our lunch. After that we put Damae's bike back together and loaded it up, and headed off back on the route.

The afternoon cycling was lovely. It was great to be moving again. We ran alongside the dyke between the polders and the sea as the day before and there at least made good progress. Heading up towards Esbjerg the coastline veered westwards making the strong tailwind into a side wind. The route was more interesting here with a good tarmac surface and lots of bends. The tempo although a little slower was still easy to maintain.

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