Denmark 1 - Ribe / a medieval town/the night watchman /a coffee but without a Danish Pastry/The bishop and the owl and the cats door

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Day 3 and we are near to Bremen . We have never been this far north before .

The weather is unexpectedly warm . 29 degrees during the day and I wonder if I have brought the wrong clothes with me . The Maxxair does not seem to do what it says on the tin. It does blow in a bit of cold air but that is the fan working rather than it pulling out the hot air and replacing it with fresher stuff from outside . My theory is it will never work . And the sad thing is perhaps it will never get a fair try .

The drive was along the motorways was as always a combination of excellent and fraught . Where the road was clear the German drivers drove past us at breakneck speed . Everywhere else we crawled along slowly due to roadworks . The fields were full of dead sunflowers , cows and sweetcorn. Miles and miles of emptiness .

The aire or parking spot we planned to park up on had 5 spots and was free. We arrived and four of the five spots were filled with one motorhome and one caravan and car which looked as if they belonged to residents and the rest of the spaces full of small white vans . We pushed our way into one of the free spots . There was an Intercoop next door where I could go and do a bit of shopping . That was not a Mr LeClerc or a Super U but I did manage to find a few items that I wanted . The plan was to go to bed early, to wake early and attack Hamburg before it got light .

The alarm was due to go off at 5. In reality we woke at 4 unable to sleep due to the noise from a nearby lorry park . The site was recommended as being quiet . It was anything but that . More roadworks . More congestion on the Elbe bridge and tunnel . It took a long time for day to break,. We were however treated to the reddest of sunrises . The sky was ablaze and looked like the fiery furnace of a steel works . It was the right thing to do to set out early.

Denmark - there was a customs post just as we entered the country . Two guards sat inside and there was a set of traffic lights outside . They were on red and we wondered if now we were out of the EU if they would pull us up and check our passports. They waved us through . Denmark warmer than we expected . Good roads but dreadful speed limits. Everywhere was clean and tidy . No trace of any litter anywhere . There was plenty of space . It made our country feel very overcrowded . The drivers on the road seemed civilised . None of the overtaking that you see in most countries . Houses here and there with corrugated tin roof . It felt odd at times but at others strangely familiar . Street signs ended in Veg - I guess it meant road . Road direction signs were in red .

We arrived at our overnight stop . Storkesoen Ribe . A camping village with neat brown chalets and large white chalets dotted around the complex . Nothing like the caravan sites of Eastern England full of caravans and white chalets. These were all tastefully done with outside furniture and BBQ's . They were all dotted around a fishing lake . The reception took both danish krone or euros and charged 16 euro 90 per night plus a deposit for the shower key . The shop was full of fishing gear and it was possible to buy breakfast the next day . English was spoken virtually everywhere . We used the showers and they were excellent , roomy , plenty of hot water and a godsend after last night . The site filled up slowly through the day and early evening and by night it was pretty full . Sadly we were woken in the early hours by van door closing .

We walked into Ribe which was around 1. 3 km away . No pavements to walk along . I seemed like Holland that the bicycle was king here .

Our short cut took us past the Cathedral school which was full of children listening to their teachers . School finished at 2pm and the town was then full of young teenagers . . Much earlier than at home. were they let out . Our kids would still be at school until 4pm .

The cathedral was an odd affair . Half built of brick and half of a mellow yellow tufa stone . It had both a tower and a spire . Ribe and its cathedral are one of Scandanavias oldest and best preserved medieval places . The school house was 16th century and the cobbled streets that echoed to our feet had echoed to feet for hundreds of years . Here and there workmen repaired the cobblestones . Half timbered and crooked houses lined the way . Many framed with roses and with the most elaborate of doors . I expected a sort of Alsace but Ribe was nothing like Alsace . I could not quite put my finger on the differences . Ribe was once a major seaport but the silting of the harbour and river put paid to that . The cathedral in its own square was founded in 856 by Ansgar who later became a bishop. His statue was outside along with a few others. He held what looked like an owl on his shoulder . But it could have been anything . We found the cat knocker on the church door and the two worn lions on the steps . But we missed the 12 noon and 3pm chimes which apparently were a folk tune dedicated to Queen Dagmar who died in childbirth in 1212.

Coffee time and we found a rather nice waffle parlour where we missed the waffles but indulged in a cup of coffee . Perhaps next time we will have the coffee with the danish pastry . When in Denmark we should eat a Danish Pastry .

Back to the church we walked with the plan to see the inside . It was whitewashed and plain . There was some muted decoration along the walls and on the arches but it shouted our Puritanism . Gravestones were placed against the walls . Some dating back to the year 1259. There were some 16th century highly damaged frescoes on the walls . They looked out at us like some kind of ghost . A pale shadow of what once was there . The church was a quiet place until we reached the altar where the windows screamed colour at us . Completely modern they like the decoration looked out of place . Modern frescoes by Carl Henning Pederson adorned the walls . They were truly awful . On the ceiling was something that looked completely odd . A child could have produced something more meaningful. I guess it was a shock and one that really would never grow on me . The was a museum in the cathedral but we missed that .

Outside in the sunlight we came upon Det Gramle Radhus - the town hall built in 1496 . Sadly this was close but did house a museum of torture . A brick building it looked quite Flemish in design . There were two Viking museums which we missed . We were saving the Viking stuff for later .

I would have liked to have stayed in town to see and listen to the Night Watchman but he did not do his rounds until 6pm and we were shattered . We would have had to walk back along the road without a pavement in the dark so we give it a miss . And we probably would have got lost in that maze of medieval streets . First thoughts on Denmark . A different country . A different place, A different holiday .

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