Denmark 5 - Gammel Estrup /Det Gronne Museum and the pretty gardens

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Gabby the motorhome is parked up on the green grass in front of the castle we are visiting today . Gammel Estrup in Mid Jutland. The car park is packed and it seems as if everyone is taking advantage of the sunny weather and visiting this lovely castle .

A castle with a museum so two for the price of one . Or rather two attractions and two prices . The name Det Gronne Museum was a bit of a misnomer. It was not green in any way shape or form . I expected something to do with ecology but once inside we found something rather different . We paid our entrance fee which was double the normal 80krone and were told that we should perhaps visit the gardens first as rain was expected . There again were no reductions for seniors. Money seems to be falling through our fingers fast this holiday and it is proving difficult to find a bank . We can pay in euros and get the change back in krone . I asked if there was a bank locally only to be told not . I had hoped that the lovely man on the booking desk might take pity on us and change some euros for krone . But no such luck . We would have to see what the next stop brought . Hopefully an open bank or a lovely hole in the wall .

On the way to the gardens we called in on the museum of Danish life . There were a number of these scattered around the complex .

The booklet we were given said that we would discover how mankind live in and off the Danish land . Hunting , fishing , forests , food and agriculture all rolled into a museum . Farm animals of which there were a few . We would learn about the traditions , the people and the machinery . We could expect holiday events for the children such as woodworking or feeding the animals.

The local schoolchildren were yet again out in force . We tried our best to avoid them at all costs . They ran amok and got in everyones way. They climbed into objects so our aim was to try to get ahead of them .

The museum of Danish life meandered from room to room . Each room depicted some aspect of Danish agricultural life . A room full of kitchen utensils . Some I recognised and others that were a mystery to me. The signs all in Danish and English told us that each item epitomised their age or use . It was useful to have English signs to give us a clue . Around a corner and we were confronted with a blacksmiths smithy . It was similar to one that we might see at home in a museum and certainly reminded me of the one that used to function in the next village to me when I was a child . On the walls were horseshoes , bolts , nails and all the sorts of things a blacksmith would produce . On another corner a large threshing machine . A display of scythes. A typical house of the period complete with furniture giving us a clue to life in the 1900's.

Sometimes we would walk around a corner and be confronted with a photographers studio. The well dressed lady waiting for her photograph to be taken .

And then carts and wagons of every conceivable shape and size lined the streets .

In a second shed we came across tractors of all ages and types . Some quite ancient and others fairly modern . Some again recognisable from the 1950's and later . Literally we were seeing the story of farming from its beginnings to recent times . A home with wine making equipment . Everything beautifully set out and interesting . We found ourselves going round and round more than once and each time seeing something quite different . And at all times avoiding the noisy children . I think we probably got lost a few times just for good measure .

Outside were vegetable plots . Gardening on a big scale . Mixed vegetables with flowers . Neat box hedges all suffering from Box Hedge Blight . At home they would have been ripped out the offending hedges and burnt them . Here they were still left to grow . The different way of growing plants amazed me . Golden Rod normally around 3 foot high was growing up a frame and was nearer six feet tall . Love Lies Bleeding looked like enormous dreadlocks . Green beans were growing up arches and all were interspersed with cabbages, marigolds and lavender. Sunflowers generally have one large flower . Here there was one plant with numerous heads . Different techniques and ones I might copy back home . A small Japanese bridge crossed the green stagnant river . It all could have been in an English country garden .

Our next stop was the Machinery displays . Carriages large and small, handcarts. A wonderful apple grading machine and a vast number of farm implements . This part of the museum told the story of how farming had changed over time . We had found ourselves noticing that almost every field here is full of some crop or other . Christmas trees by the thousand . Potatoes seem a staple crop and we saw much harvesting of them . Fishing lakes everywhere .

It was extremely interesting to find something completely different . One thing we have found is that there are different things to see but sometimes they are hard to find . They feel expensive . We have not had a meal out yet . There are few restaurants open . None of the menu of the day . Even the castles fail to offer food as a way to make money. Perhaps we will find something in the next few days . But next we have to go over to the castle and see the contents. As the guy on the till said we should how the poor lived and then how the masters lived .

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