Drunk in Faaborg, Funen Island, Denmark
Zagan the motorhome’s in the official marina-side aire in Faaborg, facing across the water, the town visible through a light sea mist (N55.09645, E10.23335). It costs 120 DKK a night to stay (£14.50), and electricity is bought extra by the kWh. We came here yesterday to give our batteries a solid recharge; the short drives recently coupled with dingy weather have depleted our ageing juice boxes.
Marina-side aire motorhome in Faaborg
Yesterday we had LPG on our minds. The stuff gives us stacks of freedom and comfort, running the fridge, air heater and water heater, and we were running out of the stuff in a country which doesn’t have LPG refilling points, or at least not many of ’em. Yep, we might have spent 3 of the past 5 years on the road, but we still muck stuff up folks. In fact, the longer we do this the more complacent I’m becoming. Luckily the info on mylpg.eu about there being a refill point just north of Odense turned out to be accurate. The garage had an ancient LPG pump, although we needed the faded Autogas lettering to confirm this, as the price of the gas was roughly double what it costs everywhere else in Europe. After a poke around the place, an attendant appeared, a friendly old chap who filled us up and sorted us out to pay in euros when our non-Danish credit card wouldn’t work. He even gave us a €5 discount, when we didn’t have enough euros for the bill, smiling at us and pushing our 50, 20 and 10 cent coins back across the counter.
Huge swing bridge on the way to the LPG station in Odense. The smooth movement of the triangular frames was a thing of beauty
LPG in Odense, Denmark, Phew!
Gassed up, we debated heading into Odense. Motivation is lacking in Team Zagan folks, we’re struggling to force ourselves to go look at another church, castle, museum, city, park, whatever. With a virtual face slap we aimed for the city centre, finding some road parking alongside a park where we could stay for an hour, and legged it around the city. Odense is a reasonable-sized place, with some 200,000 of Denmark’s 5 million-odd folks living there. Its main claim to fame is Hans Christian Andersen, who was born and grew up there. Walking past an enormous building site where the city centre should be, we followed umpteen signs to his old house sat among a pleasant area, looked at it, and headed back to the van.
Hans Christian Andersen’s House in Odense
Odense Manhole Cover
Hans Christian Andersen – author of various travelogues as well as his famous fairy tales
Apparently the girls love graffiti writers!
30 Billion DKK are being spent on redeveloping the city centre. It looked like the archaeologists were carefully digging over this part of the works
Odense city centre as of Oct 2016 – dug up!
We had to elbow a small child out of the way to get this photo. Just kidding, just kidding!
Massive building work-aside, the city seemed an interesting place and the locals seem to like it, perhaps helped by it being one of the cheaper cities to live in in the country. We weren’t massively taken with it though, and opted to head south to Faaborg rather than look for somewhere to spend the night. Heading out into the open countryside, ploughed-brown fields flowing to the horizon, and we again failed to spot a single one of Denmark’s 25 million pigs. They’re all raised inside it seems, like factory chickens. I looked it up, and found reference to a state-of-the-art pig farm, a giant warehouse of a thing where the pig’s waste was used to feed an equally huge tomato farm on the roof. A slaughter-house was incorporated into the building, ostensibly to reduce transport stress for the animals.
There are five times more pigs then people in Denmark, but none are roaming the fields
In Faaborg we came across a plethora of no-motorhome signs around the port, having us wonder whether we were no longer welcome, but around a corner we spotted the aire with space for 6 vans. Rolling in, paying up, plugging in, WiFi-checking all took place before I cracked open the fridge and cracked open the first of many beers. Yup, yesterday was Drunk Monday for me, a concept Phil and Liz introduced us to on the windswept island of Pag. I’m not proud, but I fancied a few beers far more than I fancied walking around a cold, out-of-season Danish seaside town. Several Lidl cans later (all stored in a bag now ready for reclaim of the pant – the deposit), and a few episodes of The Sopranos, and we hit the sack.
Ju was, of course, far more restrained than me, leaping up and going for a run around Faaborg this morning as I recovered with a bacon sandwich. We’ve talked through where we’re at with travelling again this morning, as we do much of the time, pondering what’s next for us in the coming months and years. We’re heading to Morocco this winter, but after that all is up for grabs. Should we find somewhere to stay abroad for a few months? Should we head home and do some work, perhaps kicking off another house refurb? One thing’s for sure: we can’t just keep rolling around Europe endlessly. It’s a wonderful, fascinating and beautiful continent, but the challenge for us, after 3 years of touring the place, is simply no longer there.
We have no idea what this sculpture represents – ideas on a postcard?
Looks like fun!
Vikings in Faaborg
Right-o, time to gear up and head somewhere.
Cheers, Jay
Oh dear!
It’s great that you tell it as it is, so to speak as to the uninitiated (like me) it all sounds wonderful but I can quite see there must be a second side to the wandering life.
Hope your planned return home and then some sunshine will enable you to decide where life is going to take you in the future.
If not travelling then well & good but I’m sure there’s many of us who will miss your blogs.
Best wishes
Ann
Wo,sounds like you both need to recharge your own batteries. Come home, have a few sherberts and curries and then you’ll be ready for pidgeon pie in Morocco!
We were just the same. Planned and budgeted for 2 years but came home with the challenge of a new house in a new town in a different part of the country after 19 months. Don’t beat yourselves up over it, just go with it.
1. Have always loved following your blogs.
2. Lovin’ that you tell it how it is (for you)
3. Know what you mean about getting blasey with services etc (gas). We recently had a problem with water not draining away (only to discover the waste tank was brimming over lol. We’ve been (almost) full timing for 4 years now!
4. Have always been surprised by the fast pace / intensity of your travels. Wonder where you find the energy? Maybe it’s a hangover from a fast paced business background?
5. Totally understand you saying you feel a bit ‘travelled out’. Wonder what drives you to keep moving on. You’ve found sooo many wonderful places! What stops you spending a week or more at each?
6. Why am I doing bullet points?? – makes me look very analytical and organised (which I’m not!)
I wonder if it’s just the weather that’s giving you the ‘downs’? I know it effects me enormously. How would you feel your chosen life was going if the sun was shining, the temperature was in the mid 20s, and the sea was warm and turquoise?
If you really feel you’ve ‘done’ Europe, any thoughts on further afield? Africa? Asia? the Americas? I’ve got my eye on the Pan American Highway in a few years time :-)
Best wishes to you both. Would love to ‘bump into you’ sometime. Morroco, this winter, seems most likely if we ever make it..
Interesting…
Keen followers of your blog and feeling for you. Echoing the last comment, you seemed happiest in Croatia where you stayed for a while and the weather was great. Norway also did it for you because it was so spectacular. So could those options be the way to go?
Do whatever makes you happy.
You have Zagan. As long as you keep him on the drive then you have the opportunity to up-sticks and drive away for a weekend, a week, a month….for life, at a moment’s notice.
As mentioned above I think the only thing I’d do differently to Our Tour is to stay a bit longer in a location. Easy for me to say from my office chair I know, but I do like a day or so off, after pitching-up somewhere, to see a place or to simply do nothing.
I’ll be very interested to see if your mood changes following a few months back in Blighty, watching Theresa May and Boris Johnson telling us, “We’ll never have it so good”.
FYI. I now have my Solar panel fitted and 2 x 11kg GAS-IT bottles fitted. Off-Grid here we come.
Lee @ Go Humberto!
We’ll certainly miss your blogs if Our Tour comes to an end but its great that you’re so flexible in what way your lives will turn next…that’s true freedom! We did an adult gap year in 2012 around SE Asia, Nepal Australia, New Zealand and South America which was the best year of our lives and it fundamentally changed us …all we could think of when we came back was how we could travel full time. We even did a rickety old Travel Pod blog if you wanted a read …might give you ideas for your next adventure! http://www.travelpod.com/members/busbydawson2012