5 – 8 August 2021
I really liked staying at Mønstrandcamping. There were a few more foreigners there than I had been used to in Sweden. Most of the „tourists“ on Swedish campgrounds had been Swedes themselves. I only met v e r y few Norwegians, Danes, Germans and even fewer Dutch people. I once saw a Swiss car and trailer from Kanton Schwyz on the motorway from Stockholm going soutwards and we even said hello by hooting – so extraordinary a thing we both found this.
In Denmark there were astonishingly many French people (especially Kopenhagen), but also a lot of Dutch, German and Swiss mostly families or couples. Someone told me before I had left that being on my own would open up that wonderful opportunity to get to know a lot of people that you would not get to know when travelling in company. Yet, I have not met one single traveller so far, be it man or woman. Maybe they are all down in Portugal, Spain or Greece.
Nevertheless, there is always something to converse about, be it the furnishing of your van, the weather or the itinery, Covid or the glasses. There is one special type of glass that you see with many, many campers, I’ve noticed. I also have these glasses – so I suppose I am a true camper.
By the way „glas“ in Swedish or Danish means „ice-cream“, like Swiss-German „glace“.
For two days I had a wonderful first-row place. I parked the van so that I could look out onto unspoiled dune landscape and the open sky from my boot window when waking up. The weather was supposed to be windy – and it got! Yet, the sun shone more generously than predicted and once again beautiful sceneries were „painted“ onto the horizon.
My only excursion was to Klint Holm, the famous chalk cliffs, as you can find them in Dover (GB), Etretat (F) or Rügen (D). I walked along the edge to the north then down the steep staircase, along the pebbly beach to the main staircase and back up. It’s 128 meters that you have to get up, but the staircase is well-maintained and it’s not a big deal to get up again the 495 steps. It’s said to be Denmarks longest staircase. You can find fossils on the beach but I didn’t find any, not as years ago in Lyme Regis (GB), where we actually found a whole lot of them.
And then I didn’t find the exit from the the parking-ground …
Unfortunately my pitch had been booked by another camper, otherwise I might have stayed a night longer at Mønstrandcamping. I was kind of forced to leave.
On the map I had seen that you can drive from Møn to the isalnd of Falster, to Lolland and from there take a ferry to Langeland and get over another bridge to Fyn – instead of driving north again and over the Store Baelt (Grosser Belt) Bridge. The fare for the ferry was pretty much the same as the fee for the bridge, so I decided to try the ferry route as a change to the bridge, even though the bridge had been spectacular.
Before I set off I tried to find two prehistoric tombs on Møn and this time my search was more succesful. I was all alone at Kongs Asgers Hoj and Sprovedyssen. I was actually afraid of going into the more then 10 meter long passage of the grave. I’m always in awe when I visit these places that have been built so many millenials ago.
Then I set off. The weather changed to the worse, becoming very cloudy and drizzling at times. I arrived at the ferry just 15 minutes before it left. The procedure was extremly easy. You could buy a ticket sitting in your car from a vending machine, just by choosing the right category and paying by card. The ferry took 45 minutes to get over from Tårs to Sporsbjerg and it was a welcoming break from all the driving.
My plan was to get to Norre Lyngvig Campsite at Ringkøbing Fjord on Jylland’s North Sea coast. But I didn’t make it that night and found a very nice campsite in Middelfart, just before crossing the lille belt (Kleiner Belt). Middelfart had been my first stop in Denmark almost four weeks ago. Now I was back, but the weather was nothing compared to what it had been then. It was cold, it was windy, it was raining if not pouring. And the forecast was not very encouraging. The next two days would probably be like that, sunny spells with not only isolated showers but rather prolonged times of rain.
I thought was creeping up: I would have to get to France at the end of the week. Would it be wise to camp two days in the wet dunes and then burn up kilometres on the motorway when the sun would be shining again? Should I go for the kilometres while the weather was cool and stay two lovely more days in France? Should I really leave Scandinavia with its mask free life, the nice food, the dunes, the wind, the spirit of the north? Should I really end this part of my journey? Get back into crowded places, central, western Europa? Should I? Or shouldn’t I bother and go to that lovely campsite in the dunes with the Norre Lyngvig Lighthouse nearby, sit in the rain, write and play guitar and hit the (hot) road three days later?
I checked up weather apps for many different places, Lyngvig, Rømø Island, Sylt or Sankt Peter Ording, where my nephew uses to spend his holidays and then Brittany. The weather was bad for the next two days at any of these places and thenafter got better in any of these places. I needed consolidation, called my friend Ruth – and opted for leaving.
