Dear and gentle reader,
No, you didn’t miss a post from your favorite elderly bikepacking couple heading north. We originally planned a one-day break before crossing the Kattegat from Denmark to Sweden, but that quickly turned into two.
Day 39 a resting day
Day 39 was pretty rainy, and Leen wanted to do a bunch of laundry, but the clothes weren’t drying fast enough because of the high humidity. But that wasn’t the only reason we needed an additional resting day.
You could say we hit a bit of a low point. We’ve been bikepacking for 38 days now, and besides a few days in Give and Husby, we haven’t really taken a long break. Our Sweden plans weren’t super concrete, and we noticed the shelter service isn’t as good as in Denmark: often no drinking water or toilets. And while we can wild camp in Sweden, that’s still a bridge we need to cross.
You could say we struggle a bit with uncertainty in general. So we booked an extra day to dry our clothes and make the planning more concrete.
I also needed some extra time to translate our experiences at the Grå Fyr (the gray lighthouse) into a daily report.
In the evening, we reverted to a familiar routine and watched a movie, which we hope will help us overcome this slight dip.
Day 40 Playing Tourist
Before noon we plan to visit Frederikshavn. It’s a town we’ve driven through a few times, but we’ve never actually stopped there. It also gave us the chance to grab some lunch and do some shopping.
It’s a pretty typical harbor town with ferries. We did not find a real historical center, but it has some nice shopping streets.
There are some things to see or visit, but rarely in a nice historical environment.
We didn’t need to do much shopping. My screen protector is broken, so I’m trying to find a new one. This isn’t so easy since my phone is already 2 years old, and two new versions have come out after it. That means I need to find a phone seller with really big drawers. No luck today.
Lunch was a bigger success. The café was connected to a fish shop at the harbor and the food was amazing.
After lunch, we grabbed some stuff for tomorrow since we’re taking the boat to Göteborg (where we can eat) and then biking to a Welcome To My Garden spot (private folks who let you crash in their garden for free) 10 kilometers south of Göteborg.
And in the afternoon, we did some more planning for our next stops in Sweden.
20 biking days and 10 resting days (at least) to reach Umeå: 1260 kilometers and 7500 climbing meters.
But we’ll see how the first ten days go. After the first two stages we already planned a bigger pause: a vacation in our vacation. We booked a typical Swedish house near Lake Vänern.
We already did a bit of packing this evening, but we still have time tomorrow, as our boat leaves at 12:15.
.
Leave a Reply