Day 1-1. Kobenhavn to Ängelholm.
Distance 93km. Average 15.5km/h Max. 42.4km/h Time 5:42.
Stan's Diary: It is 8:20 and we have just stopped in Odense. Lots of small futuristic trains with really deep side windows are scuttling back and forth. The sun is shining, it feels good to be back in Denmark despite the troubles we had last year. We're only going to cycle as far as Helsingor, before crossing to Sweden, but the rolling landscape and the ripening wheat looks terribly inviting. Damae is in the shower, we will soon be having breakfast. We both slept quite well and it is great not to be having such an excruciatingly early start as last year. Bye bye Odense, we're off again. I want to come back some day and see if I can get some more smoked cream cheese. I can't believe it is so sunny! Next stop is breakfast, and it comes to us.
0927 Past Ringsted and heading on to Copenhagen. The sun is still up and breakfast is slowly being digested. I'm bored. Still a nice way to be bored, the rolling wheat covered Danish countryside whizzing past. Still, I really want to be on the bikes heading to Helsingor.
We arrived in Copenhagen station on time, to be greeted by sunshine and a breeze. We hauled our bikes out and then put the bags on them in the melee at the narrow end of the platform. Fortunately, the time it took to sort out the bikes meant that we missed most of the rush at the lifts but it still took us several minutes to arrive at the main station hall. The station itself was worth a dawdle through, indeed it was rather busy so going any faster was a chore anyway. Although the lower walls are made of brick the upper structure supporting the roof and walls are made entirely of wood. The ornate wooden structure was interesting and it nice to see this unusual style of building in a train station. Shortly afterwards we were out in sunny Copenhagen, having spotted a sign to the Tourist Information and noticed just how stiff that breeze was.
I waited by the bikes whilst Damae went off to find out the location of the Tourist Information, and noticed a refreshing variety of 'buckets' in the row outside the station. Our newly cleaned bikes looked just too new beside them. It was interesting to see that Copenhagen looked and felt a lot more like Amsterdam than Oslo, and not just because of the rows and rows of bikes and the flatness of the land. The numerous cyclists whizzing about ignoring road signs and red lights, seemingly defying the natural laws of Physics, without feeling a need for any courtesies such as sticking a hand out to show where they wanted to go, reminded me very much of the bigger cities in the Netherlands.
A couple of minutes later Damae reappeared and we cycled the two hundred or so metres from the station to the Tourist Information. Parking the bikes outside I waited again whilst Damae tried to get some cycling maps (which apparently should be available from all Danish Tourist Information Offices). I realised that it was really rather cold in the wind that whistled along the road and dug out my rain jacket to keep the worst of the wind at bay. 'A lazy wind' as they say in parts of Northern England. 'It can't be bothered to go round you it just goes straight through you'. I was definitely not warm.
Damae returned with the news that the queues were long and she had found a map of Copenhagen and environs that would probably be good enough to navigate out of the suburbs. The route basically would follow the coast for much of the way so we didn't expect too many problems. We made our way out of town reasonably quickly without any completely wrong turns. I was map reading and was fortunately sharp today. After one inspired and informed guess at a crucial junction we were on our way into less well populated areas of the coast.