Fur the perfect island of special sand mining (diatoms) and general awesomeness

Fur, the beautiful island

We ended up with an extra day in the North of Denmark, so we decided to go to the local island of Fur, as recommended by Lars.  Fur is really very close to Morsoe.  So close in fact that it was only a 25 min flight, 15 mins of which was taken up in engine warm up at the beginning and circling the airfield prior to landing.  If we'd had a lookout on Morsoe we would have been able to see Fur from it.  

Fur is a little farm strip, owned by Poul, who promptly appeared from building a bike shed / toilet / shower room next to the hangar.  Poul is a really fantastic guy, who turned out to be building a helicopter.  We had to see that.  So we both hopped on the back of his quad bike for the short trip across the island to his garage where the project was progressing steadily.  

Me on quad bike

Chopper, awesome

Then we had tea with his wife and daughter, who then took us for a walk along the sea-shore.  Back in the day Fur's waters must have been pretty quiet as a whole heap of diatoms and larger stuff has been laid down.  The diatoms are mined and the fossils are collected.  So the sea shore walk was a good opportunity to look for fossils, which Poul's wife is great at and found us several examples of what I would call moss.  Unfortunately I was less good and didn't find that bird / archaeopteryx / fish that I would have liked to.  We also had a look at the little hiking shelter log huts, which we really wanted to go back and try out, but even in a 5 month trip there is a time pressure to keep moving.

Stunning coastline

The fossils come out of the cliffs behind us

Fabulous hiking huts

Cornflowers in the corn, it all begins to make sense

Then we went for a drive around the entire island to look at the old and now silted up harbour, the diatom mines and other sites.  At 5.30pm we were dropped of back at our plane after having a marvellous time and really having seen the island.

Poul would like to encourage visitors to his landing strip and I can't think of any place I'd rather go.  Lovely for bathing, walking and kayaking.  Poul has bought 20 new bicycles that visitors can borrow and there will be by now a toilet and shower available.  

Diatomaceous earth

Morsoe: Danes bearing Danishes

In Denmark we have been really overwhelmed with kindness.  Not long  after we touched down in Morsoe Jens-Erich & Ewa arrived with some really superlative Danishes, apparently inspired by our account of the Danishes eaten at Endelave. We haven't heard from them yet, but we hope that they still look at our blogs from time to time and will see his and drop us an email.

Morsoe is a medium sized island in the north of Denmark, its connected to the mainland by a bridge but due to the island nature of the region it feels pretty isolated, or as people say about this area of northern Denmark, it's the 'wild West'.  In the past the farmland on this island wasn't very valuable, which allowed the gliding club in the 70s to purchase a swathe of farm land and move away from the nearest large airport to their own small strip.  For the first few years members who were themselves farmers took care of the harvest, but now they lease the land out, proceeds of which help fund their aircraft, what a brilliant way of organising a club to make it unaffected by governmental policy and financially independent.

Gratuitous shot of wind turbines from the air - the shadows are so lovely

The next day we cycled into Nykobing, the major town on the island, which being a pretty little port town should be quite similar to Lemvig, which by plane is pretty close by and completely overrun by German tourists.  But it seemed a lot quieter and a bit economically depressed.  Everywhere we go (e.g. McDonalds in Aarhus, don't ask) we see brochures for its major tourist attraction, Jesperhus, a big garden funpark, so it seems like it should be a major tourist destination.

Fantastic fountain in the town square

Town logo, on all the drain covers

Nykobing from the air, bridge to the  mainland in the back right

Nykobing harbour

We didn't make it there though, instead we did some hard work uphill on gravel mountain-biking on our extremely road specific bicycles through a fabulous forest and had a look at the great cast concrete bridges connecting the island to other landmasses.

With lovely Peder who lives next door and looks after the club

Lemvig (DK) – barrows and shipwrecks

The weather forecast was for deteriorating weather, and with Norway being a high stakes kind of country we decided to fly directly south from Bergen back to Denmark, specifically Lemvig on the north west coast of Denmark (nordvestra Jyllands).  But it was not to be.  We made a weather break in Stavigner, and after a couple of hours of rain, continued down.  The clouds were low, and we saw several small Norwegian villages being smote, but managed to duck and weave until the sun came out at around the point of the international boundary.

Lemvig is a beautiful little town not far from the fantastic flying club based at Lemvig international – an old airfield put up by the Germans during WWII.  There are around 30 bunkers in the area and the airfield itself was hidden during the war with a couple of local decoy fake airfields placed in nearby towns.  More recently Lemvig is a popular tourist destination as it is so pretty and until 15 years ago it had a large Bang and Olafson factory.  The club itself has hangars and workrooms that were German truck workshops and the clubroom itself was bought from B&O when they shut down and moved on site. 

Coming in to land, note sand mining and dirt bike track

The harbour

Part of the old hangar which was originally a truck workshop

The kitchen in the ex B&O clubhouse

We were lucky that Patrick, a Brisbane boy who has lived in Denmark for many decades, took us under his wing. He showed us all the local sights: the bunkers, the model plane meeting at Lindtorping for jet propelled metre long models – scary stuff, the Strandingsmuseum (shipwreck museum – for those of you who have told us that the South coast of England is the most dangerous in the world, the Danes would put the North West coast of their land in the first place), local barrrows and the remains of a viking fortification, the following day by popular request (i.e. by me) the Thyboron Fiskedage (fish day), where we got to taste local specialties, hear Torfisk play (lit. salt fish, but actually the local band that is Danemarks aeldeste Boyband), and buy a massive Kulmuehle – coalmouth or hake, mmmm it was nice baked.

Kulmuehle (hake) prior to cooking

We had to stay an extra day in order to see the Traktor Trek, where custom built tractors compete to pull a moving weight behind them.

Norway fjord flying: Sogndal to Bergen

We stopped for a breather after the mountains at Sogndal and the stop was a bit of a mission.  The people there were lovely, but....  The card reader would only take Norwegian cards.  (This is quite a large airport)  Then there was a 100 Norwegian kroner charge for paying in foreign currency.  And how could I forget the 25% VAT on the charge.  So all in all we paid €43 for the landing, €15 of which was fees, making this the most expensive airfield of our trip so far (speaking from 3 weeks in the future) and hopefully only to be topped by Rome.

So since we knew how expensive everything gets in Norway we opted to continue down the fjord whilst the weather was good and go in to Bergen.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Light beams

Nice huh, but I still prefer the mountains!

Finally we got to the metropolis that is Bergen, I'd spent some rainy time in the clubhouse in Klanten looking up all the interesting things to see, but of course it was after 8pm by the time we touched down.  Bergen is again a major airport.

Bergen

So we set out to find somewhere to stay.  My prior research had shown that hotels start at around £150 per night for a double.....  So it was time to get out the trailer.  The airport security guy who came to say hello looked somewhat shocked when I came to the conclusion that we would not need our tomahawk that night & pulled it out of our duffel bag and threw it back in the plane.   Luckily Julian talked really quickly about planes to distract him.  We spent the next hour pootling around trying to find somewhere we could pitch our tent out of view.  This was before I discovered that my bicycle Garmin has all sorts of normal GPS features (like find the nearest campground / local museum etc.) so I just scoped a largish area with no driveways marked & headed there.  On the way we found a marginal spot.  Hey sleeping on what felt like a 20 deg slope is worth it when you save that much.  The tough thing was was once I'd prepared the corn, carrots & cabbage for dinner, we discovered that our stove had blown a seal and was definitely not going to be cooking us dinner.  Raw carrots & corn ok, but we baulked at raw cabbage :-(  So we retired with our fly off for reduced visibility (yellow tent not such a good idea under the circumstances).  But Odin or Thor or Loki was smiling upon us and we were given a night without rain (an unusual occurance for Bergen).

Attack sheep, that stared at me & baaed as we put up our tent.

The next morning we packed up and got out of there as quickly as possible.

Ju with a trailer full of camping gear

As always the weather was looking pretty good, but set to get worse.  So goodbye Bryggen, and Stave church, maybe some other time (when we're rich)!  We're back to Denmark.

Flying the rugged Norwegian terrain

Eventually it was time for us to depart Siljansnaes, which was really sad as we greatly enjoyed it there.  And there were so many more places to investigate in the region.

Goodbye Siljansnaes!

Swedish lakes en route

Well hello Norway

But the weather looked ok for Norway so we thought we'd better take the opportunity.  So we went out to Reinsvoll.  And landed uphill on a very strange texture.  When we got out of the plane our feet sank into a mix of gravel and fine clay and water.  Hmmmm.

Note the slope & the rivers on the runway....

No one around so considering the miserable weather we decided to keep going to Klanten.  At Klanten we were very lucky that Arne was able to come and see us after work (9.30pm!) and help us out with petrol.

I love the aeroplane cut out from the Klanten aeroclub's shutters!

The next day the weather was still not so fantastic, so we got to meet some club members and a whole group from flying for the disabled.  I have to admit that this seems to me to be a much more exciting excursion than riding for the disabled....

Just a short discursion into the differences between Sweden & Norway from the air.  Sweden is predominantly a land of forestry, it appears to be divided into a patchwork of fields with pine trees of different ages.  As soon as we crossed the border to Norway all the land was covered in yellow wheat fields.  Which we initially attributed to the harshness of most of the land making people make the most of any arable land, but in fact turns out to be due to large subsidies paid by the government to the farmers, as Norway is a country very wealthy from its oil fields.

Klanten - we camped next to the trampoline

And again off topic - loved the pine clad bathroom, when you have a shower it smells like the sauna, mmmm.

In the afternoon the weather had cleared a bit and since the forecast was not improving over the next few days, we decided to see if we could make it over the mountains to the Sogndal fjord.  We kept a good eye on the wind direction (as it causes up- and down- drafts on the mountain faces, and the last thing you want is to be blown onto a Norwegian mountain peak!) and approached with great caution and always an eye to being able to turn back.  I have to say that it was incredibly stunningly beautiful, if incredibly harsh and unforgiving. On many occasions I wished I could zoom out further to capture the amazing views.  I've been to the South Island of New Zealand and seen their fjords, whcih people say look like Norway.  And I have to say that Norway looks a lot more like Norway.  Amazing.

check out the mist in the next valley

Awesome terrain

steep drops into the valley

Bad weather out the left window, inc snow

more hills

and here the fjord is starting

crazy mountains

Siljansnaes: happy days by the lake

Lake Siljan is really very very large.  In fact we thought we'd arrived already when we were about 9nm away from the airfield, only to discover that what we had thought to be the lake was just an inlet....  It is the preferred holiday destination of people from the south of Sweden (in which I include Stockholm), and despite many dire warnings about mosquitos was really very comfortable with good weather.

The wonderful lichen on the redcurrant tree warns of good rainfall...

We arrived just as their annual 2 week fly-in 'Crayfish days' was beginning, so it was all action with a wacky flying theatre show involving a couple of small bi-planes planned and lots of preparation. 

Not the flying theatre, but maybe future pilots???  We loved these pedal-planes.

The location is really idyllic, and the air-park reallly very tempting.  We just have to work out how we can combine living there for part of the year with a Europe based business. We met a large number of really interesting people who live at the airpark (at least part of the year) and the entire place has a very congenial atmosphere.

These kit houses not only look traditional, they're also remarkably quick to put up, now if only the weather were appropriate for such a building in Hervey Bay!

traditional Leksand wind indicator

Lovely plots facing onto the runway

We ended up spending most of our time socialising (I nominated myself as the official waffle taste tester for the trial cooking runs for the fly-in), so didn't get out and about too much.  We rode into the nearby town of Leksand one day which was a really beautiful ride, especially on the way back along the lake (we managed to take the main road on the way in), the route took us through a lot of beautiful little villages and the site of the largest half-pipe in Sweden.  I was surprised at one point by the strong smell of wook permeating the air, apparently from one guy chopping his winter wood supply.... Then we came around the corner and saw the sign to the sawmill.

Leksand crispbread on sale in the Leksand supermarket

Traditional style building in the ski-area, note red colour from rot-inhibiting copper paint

Days 17 to 18 - so back to the mainland: Siljansnaes via Lemstanas

We thought we'd go to Siljansnaes on the way to Norway, as it's a really massive lake which is meant to be really beautiful.  Well we made it across the sea before the cloud level sank and sank and a short way inland we ended up landing at Lemstanas glider club.  This was really the best thing that could have happened to us, as it is a really active, well organised club with very kind and enthusiatic members.  We got up very very early (5am Swedish time) and so landed shortly after 9am, and as the day progressed, more and more members came in to say hello.  Paul took us around the airfield and showed us his lovely Zodiac; we asked if we could borrow his jerry cans to fill the plane up more economically (compare just over €1 per litre to the €2.44 per litre we paid a couple of days earlier at Mariehamn airport).  Then he offered to drive us into town (Sandvik) to fill the cans, and then giving us a tour of the town before dropping us off to do some touristing / shopping.  My sneakers smelt so bad by this time that Julian had strongly suggested that I get new ones....  And then they have these neat shopping baskets with alloy frames....  And then we found a System Bollaget (system company direct translation), which is an outlet of Sweden's alcohol monopoly, and when I say outlet, I mean the only shops in Sweden where you can buy any drinks stronger than  3.6% beer.  I can tell you this system has probably been good for us as we just haven't drunk anything except for the odd light beer since we've been in Sweden.

The evening was car bingo; what is car bingo I hear you ask???  Well it's pretty wacky, about 80 vehicles turned up on the field, and sat in their cars while the MC called out numbers.  When they got a bingo they honked....  We sat in the clubroom and helped support the club by eating 4 hotdogs each (not american size, but IKEA size - we're really surprised  discover that IKEA food really is exactly what the Swedes eat).  And spent the night in a visitors cabin, which was really very comfortable.

Bingo!

The next day Paul and a friend took us around the local area; to a summer farm, where young women used to take the cows and goats in summer to graze in the forest, freeing up the main farm for hay production.  The women would milk the animals and make cheese.

Nibbled to death by goatlets!

At the summer farm - I love these traditional fences and would like to make one myself

We then went to a local printing museum, whcih was quite fascinating: one day in the mid-70s they went home from work and the next day the plant was closed, so everything was still there and they do a little printing of napkins etc. these days.  The funny thing was the no-one appears to have ever changed anything when they were working there: there were drawings from 1900 and newspaper cartoons still stuck up on the wall.  There are very many small museums in Sweden - pretty much every small village you come to has at least one.  They appear to be mainly privately owned.  Around 4 the weather was clearing so we went back to the airfield and continued on to Siljansnaes.

Goodbye Lemstanas, we had a fantastic time