Safe Return Doubtful

Just a brief post about a few days of travel.. 

From the port of Hirtshals I headed south for an hour to Rebild Bakker National Park, not far from Aalborg, a place I’ve been to a few times, and seem to have decent weather on each occasion. Monday was fine, with a cool morning warming to about 10C, but ideal for a couple of hours collecting peaks in the park. Somebody told me once it was nicknamed the Danish Alps, and that has stuck with me. It’s like one of the more famous National Parks in the Alps or Pyrenees, but in miniature. 

From there I drove just a couple of hours south to Kolding and stayed on the small peninsula just north of the town that is owned by the scouts. A few years ago I met a guy in Sweden who worked there, and told me I could always stay there. There’s a good walking trail around the fjord coast, and when I’m there, usually oof-season and midweek, it’s completely quiet. It will be the last fjord I’m on for a while. 

I gritted my teeth and drove through Germany on the following two days, about 500 kilometres and five hours on each day.

The German motorways are similar to those in the UK in that they are very busy, with plenty of roadworks and hold-ups, but added to that there is no speed limit, so keeping an eye on the left hand mirror for cars coming past you at 140 mph plus, is essential. I drive so infrequently on these sort of roads that I do find it tiring and even stressful. 

Late on Wednesday afternoon through I crossed the border into France just south of Strasbourg. This is Alsace, busy for eight months a year, but perfect to visit right now with about 16C, partly cloudy and calm. I stayed, as I did in the snow of January 2023, in the aire of the small town of Châtenois. There are a few campervans and motorhomes around, but not many. 

Châtenois is famous because it’s on the ‘wine route’ and due to its medieval architecture, the church, its town hall, and The Witches’ Tower, a Gothic archway from the 15th century. 

I do have the time to avoid the toll roads in France, and today I drove another four hours south through the hills of western Jura on wonderful quiet roads saving myself 56 euros in doing so. It’s an area I haven’t been through before, as previously I’ve been nearer the higher peaks. I avoided the bigger towns Besançon, Montbéliard, Belfort and Pontarlier, it was a great route and one which I’m keen to do again, but over a week or more. It is close to the route that we used on Bike France in 2001, a course I led (as the only adult) from Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer to Calais over four weeks.. I must look up the exact route, it’s buried in a loft somewhere..

Tonight I’m at an aire at the small town of Cuiseaux, on the southwest edge of the Jura hills. The old part of the town dates back to the seventeenth century.

My plan is to get the ferry across the Mediterranean from Almeria on 8th December, with a couple of weeks in the mountains just off the eastern coast of Spain beforehand. There is some much colder weather arriving next week, it’s currently 20C here, so potentially crossing into Spain in the middle of next week.