We left rather late today as Mads had arranged for a journalist and photographer from a local newspaper to document our trip and hopefully write a piece about it in the local paper.
They turned very punctually – unlike us, who were nowhere near ready to have our photo taken. The photographer seemed very interested in Lucy’s bloody knee, while the journalist took details of our mission and what we were doing. We had no idea what they would do with all this, but it seemed like a great idea so we went along with it all.
We set off in driving rain, and messed around in town for a while and eventually found a much needed video cable! We eventually left Odense, and headed for Neyborg where we would get a train to leave Fyen, and cross the bridge into Sjaelland (in Danish this means Soul Land), where we would continue on to Ringsted.
We carried on through miserable weather, until Lucy’s knee got so bad that she departed our group to get on the train and meet us in Ringsted – only to discover that the local railway station had closed 10 years ago (but not after cycling an extra 5km to find this out). We finally got to Neuborg, where we jumped on a train to get across the water, and decided to also carry on to the next hostel – it was extremely late by that point, and very wet and cold, and we couldn’t really leave Lucy by herself on the train (we are a team after all…).
At one point on the journey Lucy noticed some rather water logged fields and requested a shot stop for some camera footage. While discussing the importance of soils and nitrous oxide emissions we got some of our (possible funniest) footage yet. As Lucy was attempting to seriously explain the facts, an incredibly hunched backed old lady appeared in the background dragging along her rubbish. Ben, being the gentlemen he is, offered to help her with her rubbish and this cued an hilarious exchange of Danish and English where neither understood the other. Check it out here…. (Dougal add link please!)
It wasn’t long after that that we made it to the station where we bumped into a woman called Susanna who recognised us from the website of the newspaper that Mads had got in touch with! Susanna wished us luck on our journey and told us of her hopes for the Copenhagen summit. Apparently her son was also on route cycling to the city! Check out the write up from the Danish newspaper here: http://www.fyens.dk/article/1383505 The journalist included all our names, who we were raising for, and even the URLs of our justgiving sites (www.justgiving.com/thecarboncycle and www.justgiving.com/thecarboncycle2) - what a legend!
In the Youth Hostel in Ringsted we encountered a group of German University Students from Flemsburg on route to Copenhagen. They were studying Environmental Management at Flemsburg University and were all passionate campaigners for action on Climate Change and reductions in our greenhouse gas emissions. Aenne, the daughter of an organic farmer, told us how the farm she grew up on has solar, wind and biomass energy on site. The farm, a mix of dairy, meat and arable, uses the waste from the animal productions to power a biogas plant. She told us of her ambitions to learn about renewable energies and influence policies on sustainable agriculture and environmental issues. Janina, a semi pro skier was very honest about her reasons for studying. After spending all of her spare time growing up in the mountains, she has seen first hand the melting of the snow, the retreat of the snow line and melting of the glaciers. She simply would like to be able to continue skiing in the future so figured she should get involved and learn how to prevent dangerous changes from happening. Martin and Hendrik’s interest in the Environmental movement and renewables was sparked in school. They both agreed that it would provide them with good career prospects for the future. Aenne, Janina, Hendrik and Martin were part of a larger group from the University who were also on route to Copenhagen. However their team-mates were on route by sail. They chartered 3 yachts and were sailing the route from Flemsburg to Copenhagen. We were very impressed by their spirit, knowledge and commitment. Dougal commented that if he has kids he would love them to be grow up to be like them. Very high praise indeed!
We agreed to rendez-vous in the morning and complete the final leg of the journey together.
Over and out.
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