Stauning: where planes retire

Stauning is Denmark's big air museum and absolutely fascinating if you're into planes.  I quite liked it, especially all the historical planes and the amazing old gliders, where you basically sat on a little plywood seat in the middle of the sky and had one ski on the bottom to land on.  Wacky.  Here are some pictures.

Awesome old training plane, note that there are no flaps / ailerons, the wing itself flexes to control the lift...

see the ski and the little ply seat open to the elements!

We stayed several days, as the weather was less ideal.  One day was well spent at the museum, then Lars and Mercedes came to visit, so we never made it to the local town.

Mercedes finding something magical under the heather

Stauning itself is a nice long tarmac runway.  Landing fee approx. 85 DKK, the first night for a bunk in the pilot's cabin is 150 DKK (20€) per person, which is higher than average & contrary to what is indicated on their website, subsequent nights are cheaper.  2 plate electric hob, coffee machine, fridge & television all available, but you need to fiddle a bit to make the TV work.  If you stay at the cabin you can also use their bicycles for free.

Egeskov Slot (castle), so good that there is a scale replica in Japan

Julian's sister Clare had a week free, so she and her boyfriend Guntram decided to see some of Denmark with us. So we brought out the big guns, Egeskov castle.  The plan was to pick them both up at Flensburg on the German border, about 45mins flight away and fly them up to Egeskov. The sun was shining & the weather looked fanstastic from our camp at Morso, so we just hoped in CGOL for the hour hop south. And the horizon just kept getting grayer. 

Egeskov castle from the air as we came over, as you can see it's a bit misty.  Otherwise note rose gardens to the left, hedge maze to the top right and Renaissance gardens hidden below a bush to the bottom right

Castle with excellent topiary in the foreground - the first peacock I've seen.

Anyway next day we managed to pick them up, by which time the weather was stunning again, so we had a good look at Egeskov's most impressive gardens: renaissence (fleur de lys shaped), rose, kitchen (in four sections including medicinal), vegetable, hedge maze, old hedge maze, deer park, etc. etc. Until 1962 it was a normal castle with the usual problem of agriculture not bringing in enough cash for the upkeep so transforming the until then rather pedestrian gardens into something special and opening the whole place to the visitors was an inspired move. 

The treetop walk was one of the best I've ever been on, as it felt like an old school suspension bridge in a Western, whilst being really quite solid

And this is the engineering holding the bridges up...

Guntram and I lost the race to the centre of the maze

Clare & I in the middle of the herb garden

With all the recent rain, the question on everyone's lips was: what about the harvest, as the wheat had been looking very ripe.  So at 9pm the questions was answered....

Note harvester behind my head in this idyllic picnic scene!

Unfortunately for Egeskov dew point was reached not long after this (about 10.30), which on the other hand was great for a peaceful night's sleep for us.

 The following day the weather was bad again so we looked inside the castle and at the enormous car, motorcycle, bike museums. Since we were a bit tired of camping beside a main road (we just pitched our tent next to the plane as it was raining when we landed), we decided it was time to move on to Samso.

Amazing old bicycle

Another awesome 3 wheel scooter based car that I'd never heard of before, the Trojan.