19 Sept 2013
Hillerod to Lynge via Farum
26 miles

Plan B: Ride south on the regional Route 31, turn west onto national Route 2, and then connect south again on regional Route 40 to the town of Roskilde. Home of the Viking Ship Museum, a Denmark “must see”. Soon to be home to us for at least one night, maybe two.

At least that WAS the plan before it ended abruptly in a bike shop in Farum, when Gina is told by the local owner “I’ve never seen a sign for Route 2 in my life.” Actually, abruptly is the retrospective word for how this plan ended, as we carried on for quite some time trying to make the Route 2 appear, like magicians in Vegas before the tiger turned. And not that Farum was even a cute town to try to make a plan like this work. In fact, Farum seemed to be the home of the lonely pram babies that grew up into bullies who got into one too many bar fights. I’d say the Route 31 ended at that mental institution we pedaled by a few blocks back but then again, without proper signs and in spite of actually having a proper map, we may not have even been on the cycling route at that point. If our luck doesn’t change soon, I will be forevermore referring to this trip as the Tour de Denmark Dumps.

As we’re standing at a major highway intersection with no idea which way to go, an ominously dark rain cloud hanging over our heads (in every possible sense), along comes a Cycling Angel. This nice woman out on a cycling errand is about to become our third Cycling Angel of the trip. On our first day of riding there was the angel who redirected us off of a sandy, cliff-side single-track trail (“That way no good,” she says, pantomiming us and our big loads falling over the cliff) onto a hidden paved cycleway that lead us directly to town. Yesterday there was the helpful man at the Tourist Information office who gave us a wealth of good information (besides the “Are you ending your trip? Oh, ok, well, the season ended about two weeks ago” he booked and gave us directions to the local campground). And now here is a very kind lady helping us with our map, with no actual idea of where the Route 2 might be hidden but instead directing us to a town about 4 miles ahead where there is a hotel still open for business. I say “still” because as the man at the Information office pointed out and as we are slowly finding out, there are many places in Denmark that have closed their doors for the season. Not troubling at all when bike touring with no pre-booked accommodations.

So here we are in the town of Lynge, not on any tourist map but at least it’s a roof over our heads and a decent enough place to start working on Plan C, which will begin with the “C” of Cabernet-Savignon.