With the realisation that i am here in Faaborg for a full week, i rest for a few hours on loungers in a breezy leafy garden before pumping the tyres on an old mountain bike.
It turns out to have minimal braking efficiency, even taking care to keep my speed very low, i am alarmed each time i need to stop. Thankfully my journey just takes me a mile to the supermarket, Lidl, where my weeks groceries are down from twenty five pounds to eighteen.
I unearth a map from the pile in my room to explore further, pump the tyres on the second old bike and ascertain it has one reasonably efficient brake. I head out again. i am in an interesting town on the edge of the baltic sea with a 4k off road trail around a lake, a busy harbour with walkway right beside the sea and platforms to swim from. Further on, a busy yacht harbour, some restaurants, hills, wow,
yes hills, ancient cobbled streets and cows. Not in that order but itll do.
I cover around 15k and am happy to think i might settle here for a week and perhaps get that last australian journal typed up.
I have slept well. I wake at eight am with the idea of leaving Denmark for my last five days and spending them instead, in Sweden, Malmo. Accomodation is half the price and the trip into Copenhagen just as far on the train as if i stayed near Copenhagen itself. Ill live with the idea for a while before booking but think thats my plan.
Using gpsies.com to check my bike milage yesterday made me think more about my route and i feel a desire to map my journeys. I spend hours plotting mountain biking trails at home using gpsies.com so am familiar with the site but it is less easy using a tablet. Nevertheless, i now have an appoximate record of my journeys.
In trying to recreate tho, my mind blurred about what and where ive been and i had to resort to reading my posts to see what i have done, but find that this is a journal of my mind, not of places. i have to resort to my photos and realise just how much is missing from my words.
I wonder if i might ever piece together my photos and my words to give a fuller picture of Denmark. In writing that i recall the words of Jonathon Lorie, travel writer, who said you need to visit a place twice. First time to get your reflections, write them up and later return, to fill in the details and check what is missing. I understand that. I sometimes read peoples blogs about places and whats where but they dont hold my attention, its often like a detached account, regurgitation of facts.
My thoughts turn increasingly to northern Spain and Portugal, although i find myself suppressing the urge to explore Cornwall on maps. Too much exploration to do here first, that can wait. To become fluent in spanish would be a realistic goal (mind you, yesterday i contemplated my last five days in Germany and learning german!)
I am warmed by the good experiences of the workaway woman i met at the station in Ribe. I might try again, find somewhere that takes several workawayers although i then lose the advantage of being in Spain, for inevitably common language would likely be english. I remember immersing myself in tiny villages when first learning spanish, i had joined term two of a beginner evening class (quickly caught up with term one content), studied for just a term, then placed myself in a rural environment for a week before heading to Seville to see my friend, by which time, day to day conversing was easy.
Most of my spanish has gone, along with my finnish, into some locked compartment in my brain but can easily be resurrected. The Guggenheim has been on my must do list for a long time. I look and find spanish evening classes, both beginners and intermediate in St Ives. Beginners would drive me demented and intermediate be a bit tough especially given that ill miss the first two refresher weeks. Sounds as though intermediate it could be though and sounds like a plan is firming. Time to rest is energy giving.
I want to plunge in to my australian journal, its now ten o clock and i still lie in bed but want to do a bike loop each day before breakfast. There, theres that perennial problem i have! I am an early morning person with a lot of energy. I can write or i can exercise first thing in the morning but get confused about my priorities if i try to combine the two.
Compromise. Nearly noon, i ate a slice of watermelon before heading out. I enjoy feeling the freedom of being without my day backpack that accompanies me everywhere. I have no ipad, no water or keys, am just off to explore the top loop of the lake.
Wow, did i say there were hills? Ive just walked two of them. Taken aback when the nice gravel bike trail suddenly became single track woodland, complete with roots and rocks hidden by bright dappled sunshine, i hit an ascent unprepared and threw my chain off. Walk one.
The trail continues on road a short while but then descends through rough pasture, making me check the map in my pocket and the board to ascertain that i am actually on the trail. As expected, the maps do not correlate but by process of deduction, i conclude i am on my intended trail even if off the trail marked on the board.
The descent is sufficiently challenging for me to be very pleased i have one brake yet still wish for another, stand on the pedals, using my body as additional braking. A sharp right turn on tussocky grass beside electric fencing and i face walk number two. I am still higher than yesterday and look down across the lake and can see miles out to the Baltic sea.
I am pleased to feel my heart pounding and am mentally invigorated, enjoying the surprise and challenge of the terrain. Short and sweet, it soon retuns to join the low gravel path and so i complete a bottom loop zip as well which gives me about 10k.
Wishing for my iPad at the top, i was nevertheless pleased to take a photo with my phone, but as I pass a wheelbarrow full of free and tasty plums and apples, i regret not having a bag and find no way to improvise with my clothing.
Microwaved vegetable and cheese omelette was tasty but more of a faff than the internet suggests, ill have to scramble instead. Im not very happy just cooking with a microwave but its all i have for a week. A beautiful bowl of plums now sits in front of me and i am torn between a desire to begin my australian journal and go to the tourist office to find out whats on. It Saturday 12.30, if the tourist office is staffed at all, it wont be for much longer.
