Day 8 - International Day of Action in Copenhagen

Dawn arrived and was ignored as we enjoyed a much needed lie after a week of a rigorous schedule off wake up calls (no, really). While Dougal and Lorraine checked out a Greenpeace demo, Ben and Lucy dragged themselves out of bed to make it in time for the Global Day of Action, leaving from Christiansbourg Castle and heading all the way to the Bella Centre.

Despite finally being off our bikes, it still felt extremely cold, and we stood around and shivered for a bit until everyone finally started walking. For some reason the organizers insisted on placing each party in a queue, calling out each groups name. We dutifully waited our turn, expecting to be called out in between the likes of Greenpeace and Oxfam in order of importance, only to discover that the our four man crew weren’t mentioned at all! Shocking, I’m sure you will agree.
Despite this, we ambled our long way to the Bella Centre, narrowly avoiding being caught in this nasty scuffle and kettle: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8409331.stm

Check out a video of the incident on facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=557512072044&ref=nf – we certainly didn’t see anything to provoke that kind of response from the police

Our long march to the Bella Centre finally paid off when we arrived after long hours of walking and chanting. By that time it was completely dark, and after listening to some of the speeches decided to head back, walking the full distance back again as the metro was completely full.

Day 7 - Ringsted to Copenhagen

Day 7

The final push (90km) to Copenhagen! We left bright and early joined by the German students. The weather was bright and sunny. Spirits were high! We made good speed. Having the extra numbers some how increased the average speed and prevented too many stops. Maybe it brought out a competitive spirit in us all or maybe we were simply eager to get to Copenhagen – probably the latter! The ride was steady and uneventful. We met a man on the outskirts of the city who informed us that police had kettled a group of protesters on a bridge. We passed some beautiful scenery reminiscent of our training trip to Norfolk, but all the while made excellent time, stopping just once for 15 minutes or so to grab some food and figure out our route for the next route.

The weather turned later in the day, and it got cold in quite major way. After a seemingly endless series of small cycle lanes in the outskirts of Copenhagen, we finally found ourselves on a major road heading into the city! We rolled our way down the incredibly crowded cycle lanes, getting in the way of the local riders with our massive panniers and wobbly steering, not to mention dodgy brakes.

Arriving at the station, we said goodbye to our German friends, promising to swing by their boat and meet later in our stay here. We were also met by a friend of Lucy’s, Dr. Christopher High, who congratulated us on our ride, before we headed off to find our accommodation, safe in the knowledge that our journey was practically over. We turned up on the doorstep of Martin, a friend of Dougal’s who was kindly putting two of us up for our time here; Marlene was putting up the other two of us.

Martin made us feel very welcome, plying us with food and drink, and we had a healthy supper there before we split up with two of us heading over to Marlene’s apartment. Leaving our stuff there, we headed out on our bikes, which felt very fast with no panniers on! We found a trendy French wine bar, and enjoyed a beer (despite the six page wine list) before heading back to our respective hosts for the first nights sleep where we did not need to get up again the next day.

The amazing takeaway we got food from: www.madglad.net

Refill your own water bottle and save the planet

Bottled water. An unnecessary waste of energy and plastic. Choose to refill a water bottle and be Eco-logical.

Amazing blog article about Leeds University banning bottled water and the environmental costs of the worlds stupidest product. Get yourself a sigg bottle and fill up for free.

http://zoecormier.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/the-great-bottled-water-debate/

Day 6 - Odensee to Ringsted

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.

Day 5 - Fredericia to Odensee

We had the noble intention of setting off bright and early. However a brief peek out of the hostel window revealed an interesting site - it seemed we had been transported into Gulliver's travels. - there was a miniature village next to the hostel,



which we delighted in setting up all sorts of ridiculous camera shots in.










We got going, and in our guilt to make up all the time spent faffing around in the village, we nearly flattened a large group of german pensioners - many cries of 'Schnell, schnell, the British are coming!'

We passed over the older of Middlefarts two bridges, in a day dense with fog, and cycled down a long wooded track, onto the coast of Fynen, and up onto Cycle Route 6. This track was particularly pleasant; long, rolling hills that reminded us of the english countryside, winding through fields and wind turbines, all poking out through the mist.

Lucy knees continued to hurt, so we had to add more frozen raspberries to Lucy's knees in order to get her all the way to Odense. We decided that if Lance Armstrong had to put frozen fruit on his knees, he would probably choose raspberries.

Having passed through the scenic side of Fynen, we entered some dark and wooded part of the track, rather like the blair witch project - and were even more put off by the thoroughly confusing signage in the woods - no love for the Danish cycling route administration, who caused to have endless debates about which route to take.



We finally found ourselves on the outskirts of Odense, rather cold and quite damp. We brought a couple of cakes and bottles of wine for our hosts - the lovely Mads and Sarah, who we arrived at about 6, earlier than any other day. Mads and Sarah were both couchsurfers, and it turned out had hosted over 50 people in their time. Mads had googled Lucy after not seeing a profile pic or references on her couchsurfing, and read all about The Carbon Cycle; impressed with our mission, he arranged for a local newspaper to send a journalist and photographer to do a piece about us tomorrow morning - what a legend! After a wonderful meal cooked by Mads and Sarah, we interviewed the pair of them, who both made excellent, articulate subjects with English that put ours to shame.

This is the captain of your ship, calling

Day 4

After faffing around for far too long in the morning, we left rather late – nearly 11:30! We headed for our halfway point, Kolding, and then onto Frederica our hostel stop for the night.

Setting off it quickly became clear that the terrain would be substantially more hilly than yesterday – or as hilly as it’s possible to get in Denmark. Lucy’s knee continued to hurt, so we attempted to find a bag of frozen peas, as this had eased the pain previously. Instead we settled for frozen raspberries and Lucy cycled for the day around Denmark with a bag of frozen raspberries strapped to her knee. That rationale here was that raspberries are more tasty to eat once defrosted – waste not, want not and everything!

Once in Kolding we had one of the best cups of hot chocolate any of us had ever tasted, and Ben brought new pedals, as one of his seized up almost completely, and his attempts to fix it had previously failed.

We carried on through the southeastern side of Jutland, lost track of the cycle route and spent far longer on a busy main road than any of us had really wanted to, and went up and down some actually quite interesting terrain. We discovered the real knack of dealing with hills, which is to build up as much momentum as possible prior to hitting it, and then quickly switch the gears down as we power up the hill. The hills are so small in Denmark that by the time you’ve done all that, you’re practically at the top already.

Arriving in Frederica, we had one of the weirdest coincidences of the trip when we met Mads, the kind man who is offering to put us up tomorrow night at Odensee in the supermarket while we bought our supper. (http://www.couchsurfing.org/)

We arrived at the nearly deserted, but thoroughly gorgeous and very modern hostel at around 6:30, cooked a very tasty vegetable stew, drank some wine, marveled at the vending machines which dispensed beer, wrote this blog and then went to bed! http://www.hihostels.com/dba/hostels-Fredericia-016037.en.htm