Where's Bertie? He's in a little picnic area a little way south of the town of Jelling (exact location: 55.73386, 9.43428).
Gosh, yesterday was a full day by our usual standards. I ran out of time to write this, although I did pen two posts on gayleybird.blogspot.com.
The words Lake District may (particularly for those who have visited the English version) bring forward images of a dramatic landscape of peaks towering over a large scattering of lakes. But Denmark doesn't do 'towering', with the highest point in the whole country standing just 171m above sea level (to put that in context, Ben Nevis, which isn't a big hill by many countries' standards, is over 8 times higher). Moreover, Denmark's 'mountains' lie in an area of generally high ground, so they are really mere undulations in the landscape.
Even so, it's a pleasant area, with plenty of natural woodland and a good few lakes, and we spent the morning walking a circuit taking in the summit of Himmelbjerget, which was believed, until the mid 1800s, to be the highest point in the country.
There it is, marked by a tower
One of the lakes
As the actual highest point of the country was only 19km out of our way, that became our next destination, although not before we made a quick trip to the main car park for Himmelbjerget (just 200m or so from the summit thus, of course, one for which you have to pay - not that we did for our flying visit) through which we had walked earlier, noting a drinking water tap on our way. Being down to our last couple of litres of drinking water, that was a welcome find.
In the car park there we met Roger and his wife, a couple from Shropshire who have been encountering as many Brits on their travels of The Netherlands and Denmark as we have - we were their first in 3 weeks. (Now I think about it, whilst we passed quite a few British registered vehicles in southern Norway, I think the last Brit we saw to speak to was on arriving in the Lofoten Islands six weeks ago).
Getting a bit more distracted on our way to our next destination, a quick stop was made in Gamle Rye (the old town of Rye; Rye itself is a few miles away). In sunshine there we took a wander past the windmill-turned-museum...
...to the old hanging hill, and then over to the church:
From what we understood of the information signs (all in Danish), the church didn't originally have a tower. Then in the 1500s it became a bigger building with a tower. We know not what happened to that building, but in 1911 the new tower was built, but not connected to the church.
Onwards again, the next stop this time was Ejer Bavnehøj, which took the 'highest point' crown off Himmelbjerget in the mid 1800s. It too has a tower on the top, which, being immediately adjacent to the car park, requires no effort to visit (even to get to the top, if you take the lift; we took the cheap option of the stairs). I failed to take a snap of the tower, so here is one lifted from Wikipedia:
That, however, is no longer the high point of the country. Further surveying last century relocated it to a nobble just 200m away, so we walked over to that point too:
They'd given up building towers on the countries high point by then. There used to be a windmill here, but it burnt down over 100 years ago. Now there is just a millstone.
Back on the road again, I was ruing not having a meaningful map of Denmark (the only one I have has a scale that is of no use for navigating) and not paying enough attention to Google Maps, so I didn't notice until too late that the SatNav was taking us a long route around. Carelessly, I also failed to notice at the next turn we could have taken. There was, however, a silver lining as I did notice, as we skirted the town of Viejle, that we were within spitting distance of a service point.
That service point has been removed from the database we are using, but as my offline version is from June, I had the details so we thought we would swing by and see if it still exists. It does, and being coin operated it looks to be for public use even though it is on a motorhome service company's forecourt. As the business had closed for the day, there was no one around to ask for permission and equally no one to tell us off if it wasn't for public use, so we took advantage by emptying the toilet, which combined with our earlier use of a drinking water tap, should see is through to the next service point we will pass (i.e. restrictions on toilet usage are now lifted!).
A quarter of an hour later we arrived at our picnic area for the night, which is in quite a pleasant elevated position. An hour later we were joined by a French van who very politely asked for our permission to join us. They should win an award for the loudest water pump ever!
Gosh, yesterday was a full day by our usual standards. I ran out of time to write this, although I did pen two posts on gayleybird.blogspot.com.
The words Lake District may (particularly for those who have visited the English version) bring forward images of a dramatic landscape of peaks towering over a large scattering of lakes. But Denmark doesn't do 'towering', with the highest point in the whole country standing just 171m above sea level (to put that in context, Ben Nevis, which isn't a big hill by many countries' standards, is over 8 times higher). Moreover, Denmark's 'mountains' lie in an area of generally high ground, so they are really mere undulations in the landscape.
Even so, it's a pleasant area, with plenty of natural woodland and a good few lakes, and we spent the morning walking a circuit taking in the summit of Himmelbjerget, which was believed, until the mid 1800s, to be the highest point in the country.
There it is, marked by a tower
One of the lakes
As the actual highest point of the country was only 19km out of our way, that became our next destination, although not before we made a quick trip to the main car park for Himmelbjerget (just 200m or so from the summit thus, of course, one for which you have to pay - not that we did for our flying visit) through which we had walked earlier, noting a drinking water tap on our way. Being down to our last couple of litres of drinking water, that was a welcome find.
In the car park there we met Roger and his wife, a couple from Shropshire who have been encountering as many Brits on their travels of The Netherlands and Denmark as we have - we were their first in 3 weeks. (Now I think about it, whilst we passed quite a few British registered vehicles in southern Norway, I think the last Brit we saw to speak to was on arriving in the Lofoten Islands six weeks ago).
Getting a bit more distracted on our way to our next destination, a quick stop was made in Gamle Rye (the old town of Rye; Rye itself is a few miles away). In sunshine there we took a wander past the windmill-turned-museum...
...to the old hanging hill, and then over to the church:
From what we understood of the information signs (all in Danish), the church didn't originally have a tower. Then in the 1500s it became a bigger building with a tower. We know not what happened to that building, but in 1911 the new tower was built, but not connected to the church.
Onwards again, the next stop this time was Ejer Bavnehøj, which took the 'highest point' crown off Himmelbjerget in the mid 1800s. It too has a tower on the top, which, being immediately adjacent to the car park, requires no effort to visit (even to get to the top, if you take the lift; we took the cheap option of the stairs). I failed to take a snap of the tower, so here is one lifted from Wikipedia:
That, however, is no longer the high point of the country. Further surveying last century relocated it to a nobble just 200m away, so we walked over to that point too:
They'd given up building towers on the countries high point by then. There used to be a windmill here, but it burnt down over 100 years ago. Now there is just a millstone.
Back on the road again, I was ruing not having a meaningful map of Denmark (the only one I have has a scale that is of no use for navigating) and not paying enough attention to Google Maps, so I didn't notice until too late that the SatNav was taking us a long route around. Carelessly, I also failed to notice at the next turn we could have taken. There was, however, a silver lining as I did notice, as we skirted the town of Viejle, that we were within spitting distance of a service point.
That service point has been removed from the database we are using, but as my offline version is from June, I had the details so we thought we would swing by and see if it still exists. It does, and being coin operated it looks to be for public use even though it is on a motorhome service company's forecourt. As the business had closed for the day, there was no one around to ask for permission and equally no one to tell us off if it wasn't for public use, so we took advantage by emptying the toilet, which combined with our earlier use of a drinking water tap, should see is through to the next service point we will pass (i.e. restrictions on toilet usage are now lifted!).
A quarter of an hour later we arrived at our picnic area for the night, which is in quite a pleasant elevated position. An hour later we were joined by a French van who very politely asked for our permission to join us. They should win an award for the loudest water pump ever!
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