Jutland

Yesterday (Wednesday) we went out exploring the northern area of the mainland peninsula, known as Jutland to the Danes. It was a big of a trek - 13 hours, about 600km, but at least the car with its hydrid diesel engine travels about 1000km on a tank! I filled up yesterday and it cost about 7x more than Qatar, but was probably a little cheaper than Australia.

Our intention was to visit the most northern point in Denmark - so we took off with our trusty GPS to make our way to Skagen. By lunchtime we had reached Frederikshavn where we randomly selected a "park" from the GPS - after winding our way on a dirt track for 1km we got the end and with the last direction being -"You will have reached your destination in 100m on the left" we unloaded and went looking. Not exactly what I would call a "park" - but a nice enough place for lunch!!!

The track we travelled 1 km on to get to the 'park' - made passing another car interesting

The car - thought I better take at least one photo

The friends that were there to greet our arrival - apparently the 'park was 100m past them on the left

This was 50m past the bovine welcoming committee

100m mark - not exactly a 'park' but nice anyway...

The whole northern coast of Jutland is basically one giant summer beach camping/holiday ground - think NSW coastal areas during the summer holidays……. camping sites, hostels, hotels, ice-cream shops, cafes, beaches, bikes….. it made the going slow in places - and Skagen looks like it is a huge holiday town - somewhat like Nambucca Heads or Byron Bay. We got out to the northernmost point to find it packed with people - turns out its also got some rather nice looking beaches out there - sand, not pebble like back on Zealand. We climbed the lighthouse to have a look around and then walked out to the Information Centre/Kiosk for a slushy. There are fortifications from the war out there as a museum, but it was a tad warm and lots of people so we headed back to the car.

From there we turned West and headed across the top of Jutland - the scenery we saw during the day changed quite dramatically. Central Denmark is marked by fields of hay and corn, yet as you go north the fields are interspersed amongst forest areas. The areas around the coast though are spectacular and the colour of the water is a dark blue, quite different to the Aust ocean colour we are used to. The fjords also mean that you can at times in this area have water on both sides of you! Ethan was the photographer from the car window again - he did manage to get a few good ones this time

Plenty of little villages with houses like this that we passed through today

A typical field from the central area of Denmark

One side of the rest stop

Other side of the rest stop

This was outside a chemist near the beach above - but no idea why or what it is about

wind farms are everywhere - in the middle of fields, on hills, in the water…...

View from the cafe where we had dinner in Thisted

Beach area near the marina in Thisted - this is a fjord, not the ocean

We found a nice cafe in Thisted for fish n chips and then finally tasted the highly recommended Paradis ice-cream. We then made the long trek back to Horsens. Our first town was Nykobing, where there was a large outdoor market and amusement park on the shore, as well as a marina, bridge and lots of holiday makers. Our next waystop was Skive. We have no pictures, but our trip through Skive found us "The Australian Bar" and just up the hill a little bit was the 'Kiwi Supermarket'.

The marina at Nykobing

Bridge at Nykobing.

This was taken as we left Thisted - you can just see the fjord in the background.