Helsingør Home of Hamlet, North Zealand, Denmark

Zagan the motorhome is facing a piece of literary history tonight. He is parked up in Helsingør (N56.04040, E12.61610), in English it’s known as Elsinore, the home of Shakespears’ Hamlet. Through Zagan’s windscreen, tonight, we have a view of Hamlet’s Castle – UNESCO listed Kronor Castle.

Yesterday, as dusk fell, we took Charlie for a walk around the park next to us. From the shadows of the trees we could see movement, then across the grass leading up to the Royal Palace we could see figures. The deer were out and about. We have a place near to where we live called Wollaton Hall (as seen in the more recent Batman Movies), which is also has a deer park. I vaguely remember seeing the odd dot in the distance there, and assuming it was a deer, but here they were everywhere. Sadly the light was growing dim so most of the photos were blurred, but it was truly amazing and an honour to get so close to these magnificent creatures.

Hermitage Castle got its name by a unique device that lifted the table from the kitchen straight into the dining room so there was no need for the servants to overhear the Royals talking about their hunt

I think we may have been spotted

Not content with stags in the grounds, they are on the castle too

After a good night’s sleep (I’m not sure if the trains stopped running or I just fell asleep, but I didn’t notice them) this morning we went for another walk around the park to see if we could capture the deer in a better light. It was still grey and overcast, and what deer we did see were all sitting down among the trees – it looks like we were very privileged to have their company last night. As I moved in closer for a picture of one I could hear a tapping noise next to me, turning around I spotted a woodpecker on an old tree. The deer were forgotten for a minute as I sat transfixed watching it work.

Deer – check, woodpecker – check = wildlife photographer of the year?

After feeling like David Attenborough for a short while, we carried on around the park before going back to Zagan to head north. After the big drives of Norway, Sweden and Finland it was nice to reach Helsingør in just over half an hour. Stopping off for fuel it was a bit of a nasty shock to have a 1.4% surcharge added to the price because we were using a foreign credit card (0.89% added for locals using credit cards). Luckily we had shopped around to find the cheapest station, and that fee was less than we’d be charged for using our debit card abroad. We haven’t tried our Caxton FX card, and don’t think we will, as that will incur a fee too.

Stopping off at Lidl we are back in the land of normality; beer of all strengths, wine and spirits are back on the supermarket shelves! We haven’t seen this since the Baltics. Of course we made the most of it, and grabbed a few beers at €0.93 a litre (under Jay’s self-imposed euro a litre limit that he set back in 2011) and a bottle of wine for me at just over €4. A one litre carton of wine was €3.50, so we only got one – we’ll be in cheaper countries soon enough.

Unhappy Jay. Booze is cheaper than Sweden and Finland and way cheaper than Denmark – but generally still more than the UK!

We reached the port area in Helsingør and parked up. The whole place has undergone a lot of redevelopment recently, including the addition of parking meters! We paid our 50  DKK (about £5.50, no credit card surcharge this time) which bought us a day ticket, it looks like we’ll have to get up early tomorrow as the charges start again at 8am.

Finally got these sussed. First times are M-F, in brackets are for Sat and in red are for Sun. So you can park your motorhome here in the day, every day – except today as the place is full of parked-up boats!

After a quick spot of lunch we headed out for a walk around Kronborg Castle. You can walk around the outside for free, but have to pay to go inside. So of course, we didn’t bother going inside. The castle stands on a headland surrounded by high brick walls. Just four kilometres across the Øresund straight is Sweden, you can almost see people on their balconies. On the land side of the castle, huge fortifications were built up over the years to prevent invaders from sneaking up on them, I’m sure they were really effective and they make for a really great pattern from above. Sadly the only sign of Hamlet ever being here was a skull we spotted through a window of a shop – alas poor Yorick!

Walking around we found a load of the gargoyles lying on the ground. In a workshop next to them were the plaster casts of their faces and new versions being made ready to replace them. Once again talk turned to Trigger’s broom (if you don’t know what Trigger’s broom is click on the link for a video clip of where the expression came from. It’s from a UK TV comedy called ‘Only Fools and Horses’. Trigger, gets an award from the council for maintaining his broom for 20 years; “This old broom’s had 17 new heads and 14 new handles in its time”). I guess everything is a bit Trigger’s broom, just some more than others. I understand maintenance, we have to do that on Zagan and at home, but where do you draw the line? What about places that were bombed or burned down during the war and have been rebuilt, are they really what they were? It all gets too complex for my head.

After the castle we had to decide if we wanted ‘to be or not to be’ warm. We opted not to be warm and walked around the docks and into the town. The docks have undergone redevelopment recently, which includes a maritime museum in what used to be one of the dry docks used for ship building, a huge culture centre and several works of art dotted about.

Copenhagen has its little mermaid, Helsingor has ‘Han’, one of many pieces of art around the town

Workers heading for the long-closed dockyards

Mural of old town Helsingor

Popping into the tourist office, the lady was pleased to give us a new booklet they have designed which enables you to take a cultural walk around the town, dock area and castle. We’d already done a lot of it, but finished off with a few more streets and alleys around the town. We circled a church twice to try to spot the English cannonball lodged in an arch from a ship on its way to the battle of Copenhagen in 1801 (it’s inside, as we later found out). The rest of the town was much nicer than we expected. It did have a lot of shops selling booze, as well as pubs and cafes, because the passenger ferry to Sweden does a roaring trade for those wanting cheap(er) booze from Denmark. Having already stocked up, we could happily wander round and enjoy the place.

It’s even more expensive here!

Door of the day – this one is in a church and leads to a crypt, I guess they just post the coffin in? The inscription says something along the lines of ‘we all end up here, sooner or later’

Back at Zagan the heating went straight on, as even with our winter coats on we were starting to feel the chill. Tonight we have the lit castle in front of us, and the lights of Sweden twinkling out of our side window. There are three other motorhomes parked up with us, so we’ll sleep well tonight before heading to the Danish Riviera tomorrow for a couple of days on the beach.

Ju x