Dripping: wet, sweat and snot
5/9/2004

It seemed as if the Scandinavian summer had finally hit.

Riding up along Denmark’s coast from Brede to Helsingor, I breathed in the holiday atmosphere. With the sunshine, the national mood instantly improved. Everyone was out on the streets, down at the beach and in the parks. The beaches were packed with white bodies, rapidly turning pink. Families were buying ice creams, postcards, buckets and spades. Students - on holidays - were spilling out from the shops and cafes. Young couples were holding hands, kissing under the trees or flowing down the streets on matching bicycles (OK, maybe they weren’t all matching).

It was the first day of my planned solo cycle tour in Denmark and Sweden, which would see me cross the channel (by ferry) from Helsingor - home of the prince on whom Hamlet was based - to Helsingborg, on the Swedish side. I was then planning to cover about 250km over five days, along the Swedish coastline, before taking the ferry from Goteborg to Frederikshavn, on Denmark’s island of Jutland.

Ambitious, really, because although I had trained in the hills of Suai, I had spent the last 10 days eating copious amounts of Danish food and doing very little at all. (I’m ashamed to admit that while unceasing rain had kept me indoors, it was welcome because I was still recovering from Roskilde - yes, it took that long.)

Still, I was under the impression that Denmark and Sweden were flat, that now the sunshine had arrived it would keep shining and that there would be nothing more pleasant than peddaling through the Scandinavian countryside.

There are three things you need to understand at this point.

1. I get havfever - badly.
2. In my mind I’m in the Tour de France, even if my abilities are better suited to Centennial Park.
3. Sweden is not flat.

Now, I love nature, but at times it really seems to have it in for me. All the rain had been good for something: the crops were high, the fields were full of flowers and along the roadside the grass was tall and seeding. Insects proliferated.

So you can imagine me in my torn shorts, stained T-shirt and yellow bike helmet, backpack and saddlebags bulging as I powered around on my borrowed 3-speed bicycle.

I sweat profusely, and as I tore through the sticky air my blotchy body became dotted with tiny black insect carcasses. My sunglasses were the equivalent of a car windshield at night and at times I’d swerve dangerously as I tried to dislodge a bug in my ear.

When I stopped - which was quite often - my chest heaved for breath, sucking in small flies. I was coughing, sneezing, spitting. Red in the face, eyes itchy and red, nose redder. The latter were both streaming and I would be fumbling in my pocket for tissues while trying to manage the free tourist map (as opposed to a proper cycling one) that I picked up in the last town, because once again… I was lost.

It was a great trip, as these things always are in hindsight, but I still can’t understand why I found it so hard to meet Scandinavian men.

Scandinavian biking tips

So, there are a few rules of cycle touring in Scandinavia that I’m sure seasoned cyclists are well aware of but I had to learn the hard way:

1. Don’t cycle with your mouth open. Reason: You’ll end up eating bugs.

2. Don’t sing whilst cycling. Reason: See above (I nearly choked on a beetle while blasting out an enthusiastic rendition of It’s Been A Hard Day’s Night.)

3. Always wear sunglasses, even in the rain. Reason: Bugs again. Your shades may end up looking like an insect graveyard but at least you won’t have the intense acid sting of a fly in your eye.

4. Stay well to the side when riding alongside a road in the rain. Reason: If you’re not drenched from the downpour, you will be from the splash.

5. The tent always leaks. No reason, it just does.