What a day, 182.9 km at 21.5 km/h, two GPS tracks because there was a ferry again.
Since yesterday was very short, and tomorrow will be Copenhagen day, i.e. recreation, I decided to try hard to get there by today. Otherwise I would either loose one day by splitting this stage into two short ones, or at least half a day of Copenhagen if I would have put up camp some km outside town first and then move to another site for the second night in Copenhagen.
I hit the road at 11:30, not really an early start, but better than the last days. While I was thinking about the smoke on the horizon, I realised that I didn’t read any news for nearly a week. Maybe that was Copenhagen burning down. One more reason to hurry.
Some km later, it should turn out that they burn the fields in Denmark.
After 28 km, I reached another ferry, i.e. another delay.
On the other side, I headed for a supermarket to shop supplies. When you challenge your body like I did during the last days, it’s really funny how you react to shelves full of food. It’s similar to going grocery shopping when hungry, but much more intense. Just looking at some products results in an irresistible urge to get them. That’s probably the way your body tells you what it currently needs.
So, yeah, I ended up buying a 1 litre box of strawberry yoghurt, which I instantaneously drank out of the box in front of the supermarket. That was lunch for today and turned out to be a good foundation for the rest of the day.
There was some short but heavy rain. It was too warm to put on rain gear, so I tried to find some shelter during the peaks. Like in this barn, or simply under a tree.
The rest of the day was riding, riding, and, right, riding. The taped knee didn’t hurt once and I could even ride with a little more pressure than the days before. Also, in Denmark they know what deserves to be called a bike route, 95 % good asphalt.
The only problem left was the mere distance to Copenhagen. The Denmark stage of the Berlin-Copenhagen route is 300 km, of which I only made roughly 30 km yesterday.
However, if you look for a car route from Gedser to Copenhagenon on Google maps, it’s only around 150 km.
On one of the camp sites in Germany, I had a chat with the staff. They told me how they fought for the route of the Berlin-Copenhagen bike trail to pass their site. Now imagine every, other camp site, village, etc. doing the same to get tourists pass by. I guess that’s what makes the Eurovelo bike trails much longer than it would be necessary to get from A to B. The extra km may be worth while the effort – the journey is the reward – but if you have a distant goal, some of the detours appear just wrong.
Luckily, Denmark has a whole network of very good bike routes which are well-signposted and also marked in my downloaded maps. I used these routes to cut off some of the unnecessary segments of the Berlin-Copenhagen route. Of course, some real obstacles still call for a detour.
When I arrived at the Copenhagen area, I checked the web for camp sites and tried calling them. But it was already too late. Some of them have business hours only until 16:00. I had a look at one when I came by, but nobody was there to check me in. So I wasted another 45 minutes on my phone to evaluate my options. In the end, I booked a hotel for two nights in the centre of Copenhagen – online from my phone at 23:00. No camping-overhead, and a perfect base for tomorrow. When I arrived there an hour later, the staff was friendly and they even offered me to take the bike to the room, but since it was a “pretty damn safe” street, I just chained it to a lamp post.
When I then started writing this post I fell asleep with the phone in my hand and woke up in the same position 3 hours later.
Today’s equipment part is about electronics.
I already mentioned the phone and bike computer. Additionally, I have a compact camera (Sony DSC-RX100M3), that isn’t on the picture for obvious reason, and a large power bank (16000 mAh) in the handlebar bag.
So I can recharge everything from the power bank for a few days, and when I have a power outlet, I use a 4-port USB loader that outputs 7.2 A to quickly load all 4 devices. Beside the standard USB cables, I have an adapter to connect the Garmin to the phone like an USB stick. I can then use the Strava desktop website to upload the GPS recordings as a file.
By the way: Don’t the Danish wall sockets look happy?