Having found an appropriately geeky bike shop on Matt's wavelength as far as wheels are concerned, Bertie the bicycle is back on the road. We cycled from Gothenburg to Copenhagen along the Swedish west coast. After the dramatic scnery of Norway, Sweden feels a little tame. It is all golden wheat fields, white wash houses and beaches. Beaches. The Swedes seem quite mad with summer. The children play in the streets until midnight, people sit on th beach with icecreams the size of ther heads, and pretty girls sell strawberries from roadside stands. (I am quite surprised that I remain the chief strawberry purchaser.)
We stop at campgrounds along the way. Some quiet, some like small cities with mini-golf courses and kebab stands, where each site has its own little fence, and its own flat screen t.v. Where Bon Jovi and country classic hits blare from the toilet speakers and every caravan is named to suggest something exotic: the 'bedouin', the 'nordic dream', or simply 'elegance'. I suppose it is holiday house living for those who cannot afford a holiday house, but it seems pretty anti-social to live cheek-by-jowl with other people but put up a fence to keep them out.
At Helsingborg we catch a ferry back to Helsingor in Denmark, and cycle back to Emil's house in Copenhagen. This being the start of our Scandinavian loop, it feels a little like coming home.
Our last three days are spent riding from Copehagen Esbjerg. It is hot. 38 degrees steaming up from the asphalt type hot, with insect wings sticking to our sunscreen and cordial fermenting in our bottles as we ride. We plan to spend our final Danish night with Thomas, a cylcle-tourist who has agreed to put us up. We pull up outside what looks like a very large greenhouse. I comment to Matt that maybe we have the address wrong as we appear to be at a garden centre. Then a smiling young man walks out, claps his hands and says 'All the way from Australia!'
Thomas lives in a housing set up which does not have a direct translation into English, but which we might roughly term a commune. Each person has their own small house facing onto an 'indoor street', which is what I thought was the greenhouse. This was not an unfair assumption, given that it is lined with tomato plants, fig trees (which we raid), garden tables. It is a lovely spot in summer, and sounds very pleasant in winter when snow blankets the roof. The evening we stay is one of the four nights a week where the residents get together for dinner, so we join them for a bbq. They are an interesting group, ageing from 0 to 70. It is not what I would have expected from a commune - not a dreadlock or whiff of patchouli in sight. It sounds in fact, like a very pleasant way of living. Thomas took it up three years ago after frustrations at work made him think something had to change. He jumped on his bike and just cycled for months, and then came back to his new style of housing (and went back to his old job with fresh eyes).
After a sunny greenhouse breakfast we ride our final day to Esbjerg, where we board the ferry to Harwich. Matt now has tan lines to rival Contador and is midge bite free. We both look more normal on the bike than off. The hills of Scotland will be no match for us...
