9 July 2014 (stormy, stinking hot, sunny, windy) 75 km

He’d been in the dining room last night whilst we’d been cooking and he was there again first thing this morning. I had recognised him as an agent of Danish Covert Ops last night. He was the typical profile for one of their top ‘James Bond ‘ style agents. Debonair, yet casual. Smartly dressed in crocs, stubbies and a tie-dyed t-shirt. He was probably slightly taller than most at four foot nine inches, thick horned rimmed glasses and bucked teeth, but as a former covert ops man myself, I had recognised him instantly, [plus it helped that I had a photograph album of all of the worlds top agents which I used to pull out at Christmas time and show the family ]

I greeted him with a coded ‘hello, I’m on to you …..you Danish covert bastard ‘ but of course he made out he hadn’t understood, by using the normal Danish greeting for good morning to other males……..’ it’s a good day to let your balls swing free’

He was good……no doubt about that and I knew that he was relaying our every move back to his commanding officer……….the game was on. We went about our normal routine, packing up the tent, loading the bikes……but something was nagging me [ this time it wasn’t Julia ].

I strolled into the dining room, pretending to fill up our water bottles [ no, that’s wrong, I did fill up our water bottles ] to see him  decoding some notes. I know what you’re thinking  “How did I know?”

A well trained eye…… and a Decoding For Dummies book on the table. He had what appeared to be a Playboy magazine and I made the usual male grunting sounds when observing said book.

‘No… No…. he spoke, I look only at the articles.’ Sure you do my friend I thought… sure you do.

It had rained steadily throughout the night, but nothing like the storm a couple of nights ago. The tent had fared well and after showering we ate breakfast and caught up with some computer stuff, whilst chatting to a lady about our travels. Another lady, Inge, came to say goodbye and gave us her card to look them up if we return. We had talked with her in length last night.

Upon completing pack up, another storm came through, complete with fork lightning so we decided to hang out in the immaculate kitchen and have a cup of coffee until that had passed through.  At 10.30am we finally hit the road with plenty of blue sky about.  Took the coastal route past ome lovely little baches, similar to NZ baches actually – it was a bit like Onaero.  We have noticed that a lot of new Danish homes are built in a similar style to new NZ homes.

The lovely flat coastal road, soon turned to hilly pastoral land and by now the sun was in full force, even though only half an hour previously it had been bucketing down.  Five kms up the road and the delightful showers we had enjoyed this morning were a complete waste of time as we                                                               were drenched in sweat.  

After 15km we made the town of Hadersley which had a very old town centre and a church from 1642.  The old town had only just finished being used in a wartime movie and you could easily see why – no set painting needed on that movie as it was all there for them.  

The grain silo that has been converted to a rock
climbing wall - the skate park is behind it

On the other side of the coin the town was in the process of making an indoor climbing wall out of some old grain silos and one enterprising young man had raised all the money for a brand new indoor state of the art skatepark.  Both will be ready for use in a couple of months and both will be free to use!

Some apartments down by the marina and skate park

It was stifling hot by this stage so we sought out some shade by the canal and skyped the kids.  That was a pleasant interlude but we had to get back out into the sun sometime, so we visited the supermarket for lunch ingredients and

headed out of town looking for a shady place to eat our lunch.  As is usually the case, you can never find a picnic table when you need one!  There were lots of hills however, with absolutely no shade for us to slog our way up – it had to be at least thirty degrees.  Finally we saw a forest looming on the horizon and our spirits lifted as by now it was 2pm and we were getting hungry.  No picnic tables but we did spy a fallen tree that we could sit on so wheeled our bikes into the lovely cool forest and began getting the lunch things out.  However, we soon abandoned this plan as we were besieged by dozens of mosquitoes.  Quickly repacked while slapping our arms and legs and hotfooted it out of there, back into the merciless sun and up the next bloody great hill.  About ten minutes up the road we spied a huge lawn area with lots of shady trees, the perfect place for a picnic and not a mosquito in sight.  It did have the slight drawback of being somebody’s front yard, but we were too desperate to care.  We also figured we were far enough away from the house that they wouldn’t notice us – the grounds were very large.  Nobody came to move us on so we were able to enjoy a delicious lunch before heading back out into the Sahara Desert – at least that’s what it felt like.  By the time we reached the coastal seaside town of Hejsminde, it wouldn’t have mattered what the water conditions were like, we were going in.  As it was, the sea was full of kelp and murky as is so often the case round here and we were the only ones going in fully and putting our heads under, although there were plenty of other people on the beach paddling at the water’s edge.  The water was very warm – we could have done with it being colder really.  No need to towel off, just straight back into our cycling gear and back into the blazing heat for what turned out to be an afternoon slog consisting of one hill after another. 

We had to be grateful for the wind that was blowing as without it the temperature would have been unbearable.  I must point out though that the gratitude was limited as the wind was very warm and of course, a headwind.  Reached the town of Kolding about 5pm hoping to find a bar that was showing the Netherlands/Argentina semi-final but the Danes (probably because they didn’t qualify), don’t seem at all interested.  So we had to just keep slogging away in the heat with our next objective to find a campground – hopefully a nature place so we didn’t have to pay extortionate sums of money.  Had a nice cycle route out of Kolding for a few kms before joining up with a fairly major road with no cycle path.  This has without doubt been our most dangerous cycling experience since the start of our journey as we had two trucks pass so closely they nearly blew us off the road.  We came to the turnoff for the village of Skopjov where we had seen there was supposed to be a campground, but there were no signs.  Saw a guy cycling up the road and asked him and he said, Yes, there was a nature place about 200 meters down the road and he led us to it.  We were so grateful as we would never have found it without him.  Set the tent up on some bumpy looking ground but hey, beggars can’t be choosers and we had definitely had enough of riding today.  Unlike the last nature place we stayed at, there were absolutely no facilities at this one, not even a tap or a toilet.  So we had to eke out what water we had and ate our herrings on buns instead of with macaroni as otherwise we wouldn’t have had enough water for our coffee – and after the day we’d had, we weren’t going to do without coffee! 

Here's a pic of last night's sunset

Wrote up the blog and downloaded the photos as usual.  As night closed in, a light breeze rustled the trees surrounding our campground and we planned our route for tomorrow.