Landing in Old Zealand

Day 41 - July 4^th 

As we had camped only 2 minutes from the ferry terminal, we got there pretty quickly the next morning although I thought the ferry left on the hour rather than at 15 minutes past and rushed unnecessarily all the same. 

It was a quick ferry ride over to the island of Zealand, home to the capital city of Copenhagen. Although a quick ride, we have become accustomed to using public facilities and power outlets as much as we can to conserve the power we have in our campervan. On this trip we managed to find a power outlet behind a set of slot/pokie/amusement machines and ran our laptop, camera battery etc. to it.

After arriving onto Zealand we decided to head to Roskilde, via the Lolland Islands to a place called Mon, which is renowned by the Danish for it’s sheer white cliffs that drop into the ocean. 

Looking out over the white cliffs of Mon.

The drive out to the coast was again very scenic and as we approached the tip of the Mon cliffs we dropped onto a dirt road and entered into a very large forest, which was quite unusual given the coastal farmland we had been driving through over the previous days.

We parked up, had lunch and then took the 4km trek through the forest and down to the base of the cliffs. Apparently the cliffs had actually been underwater many millions of years ago and they were formed from the breaking down of sea creatures. Many fossils had been pulled out of the cliffs, including the teeth and jawbone of a Megolasaur.

Old and ancient forest keeping the cliffs
 from falling into the ocean.

Chalky White Cliffs.

Descending a couple of hundred steps to the beach.

Down on the pebbly/rocky beach. It was a bit worrying considering the limited space between the cliffs and beach, and the propensity for landslides.

After making the trek back up the 1000 steps or so to the top of the car park, we then made our way to Roskilde.

Roskilde is famous for a couple of things, but most recently it is host to one of the biggest music festivals in northern Europe. Having already spent four days at a festival in Germany, we didn’t really look into the Roskilde festival or know when the dates were. 

However, it just so happened that we were arriving into town a day before it all kicked off. We had a quick look at the ticket prices and after realising they were about £190 each we decided to give it a miss. 

As it was a Wednesday, we noticed that the contemporary art museum was open with free admission. Our guidebook had given it a fairly good review so we rushed over to get in before the 5pm closing time. Now before entering the museum, we couldn’t remember whether it was contemporary or modern art that we liked. After about 3 minutes, a lot of confusion and mutterings of ‘what the fuck is that’, we realized it was modern art we preferred and left to head towards the Roskilde Cathedral before that closed for the day. 

The Roskilde Contemporary Art Museum and Cathedral. The building isn't actually that wonky, I just struggled with the panoramic function on the camera.

The Roskilde Cathedral was quite grand as churches go, as Roskilde was actually the capital city of Denmark before Copenhagen knocked it off its perch. Similar to Westminster Abbey, the church was a place for the burial and tombs of many past kings, queens and nobles. 

What we found most interesting about the church though, was the number of people littered around the holy site, sleeping on the floor. As it was not yet five in the afternoon, we found this really, really strange and the people were quite well dressed for people you would normally see having a kip in a church. 

As we were leaving, Claire enquired as to why all these people were camped out and were told that as the music festival was on, the church was happy to take people in during the day if they needed a rest for the frenetic pace of the festival up the road. I couldn’t believe my ears! If you have to go for a power nap before a festival has even started, then you really shouldn’t be going. 

Had I known this information beforehand; I would have kicked them, woke them up and told them to harden up a bit cause things are likely to get worse!

After our quick venture around town, we headed back to the van to find a suitable camping spot for the night. Again we used a recommendation given to us and it came up trumps, as we were right on the marina and parkland in a quiet secluded car park and with easy access to public toilets.

It was so quiet in fact that I whipped out the BBQ and we had a cook up from the back of the van in the wonderful Danish sun.

After dinner we took a walk through the marina area, as the Roskilde Viking museum has open-air exhibits of ships that were used in centuries gone by. It was a really interesting place to wander around and they even had a full Viking ship replica that had been sailed/rowed by 24 crew from Roskilde in 2008 to Ireland, down past the southern coast of England, up the English Channel and over to France and then back to Denmark. 

Claire checking out a Viking ship in the process of being built.

Sunset over the Roskilde Marina.

Some of the finished Viking ships.

Viking Ship and Bridge over the marina.

This was all part of a documentary to show how the Vikings pestered the English & French between the 8^th – 11^th centuries.  To add to our already interesting evening we also managed to stumbled across a gathering of oldies performing traditional Viking steps to live music!