Lepod's Blog

Today we took the train to Roskilde, which is about twenty minutes away from Copenhagen, to the Viking Ship Museum where they are building Viking ships using experimental archeology. They have five wrecks that were sunk a thousand years ago to be used as a blockade of the port, and they are building replicas using the same technology that was used back in the day. Very interesting place, it’s a bit like Guédelon in France except that’s a medieval castle.

In the summer you can go sailing in some of these boats, we may have to come back some time. The little town of Roskilde is actually very pretty and has an impressive brick church, as they tend to go in for here. We had nice traditional danish open sandwiches with fish and shrimps, or in Paulines case egg, shrimp and avocado. Very tasty. Nice day here when the sun was out. The wind could cut through you with a knife at times though.

Today was a bit experimental as Pauline wasn’t sure about all the links, for example according to google there was no bus on the island of ærø so we thought we might have to hitch a ride. Anyway we took the bus from Flensburg to Fynshav in Denmark as that’s where Ellen the E-ferry leaves from to Søby. Nice run on the bus, we drove alongside the fjord for a while and then into the countryside which was lovely.

The ferry was super smooth and quiet, and as it’s only four years old everything was very nice on board, very well thought out and much less stinky than your usual diesel ferry!

Once at Søby we were happy to see a bus stop just next to the ferry terminal so we jumped on the bus to the larger port on Ærø which is Ærøskøbing. When Pauline went to pay the bus driver informed her that buses were free on the island, that was nice. Ærøskøbing and the island itself were extremely charming, thatched houses with cuteness off the scale. Well worth a separate trip to stay here some time I think. Anyway, we had a couple of drinks in a cafe while waiting for the ferry to Svendborg, jumped on it and back off, found our hotel which conveniently is just across the road from the ferry terminal.

Flensburg turned out to be a delightful place to stay, there’s a historic walk called the “captains walk” which takes you around some of the older houses some of which were possibly built for actual captains back in the day. There’s also a museum for classic sailing merchant vessels, and classic yachts, as well as a maritime museum. The waterfront is quite lively and there were plenty of people walking  their dogs and enjoying the view.

Interesting city, would definitely visit again!

The train to Brussels took a few hours, but it seemed longer because a lady across the aisle from us was talking loudly to all her friends on her cell phone until finally someone told her off. Noise canceling headphones to the rescue!

Thursday we had a nice day in Brussels, wandering about the Grand-Place and historic centre, dropped by the Tintin shop and took a train to Leuven as Pauline had a conference there one time and she really liked it, wanted to show me. Then we had moules et frites for dinner, or at least I did, the mrs is not so keen. Nice place, the mussels were excellent and they gave us both a free limoncello at the end. Today we are currently on the Eurostar to Cologne, on our way to Flensburg.

We have a long day ahead, it’s quite a distance to Flensburg and there’s a few train changes along the way. Should get there about 8pm if all goes well. Pauline takes the advantage of long train trips to do her work.

We took the Eurostar to Cologne as the Deutsche Bahn had emailed Pauline and told her our planned trip was impossible. We had to buy tickets on board but the train manager was kind and found us some very nice seats. The change over in Cologne went quite well but the train was late due to some inaudible reasons so we had about 8 minutes at Hamburg to find the right platform and cart our luggage up and down a large flight of stairs! Made it just in time. Train to Padborg in Denmark was pleasant but slow, then rather than wait an hour for the next one we grabbed a taxi to Flensburg. Quite a trip. The taxi driver was very nice and told us all about his Tesla.

After a nice breakfast at the Hotel Bayeux we took a walk in the town and then headed for Fougere.

The Château de Fougères is one of Europe’s largest medieval fortresses, Pauline was keen to visit so we stopped there on the way back home. We were glad we did, well worth a visit. Nice day too.

It’s an interesting place Fougères, would definitely come back here.

It was a good weekend, most enjoyable thanks Pauline xxx

Last weekend on the Sunday we biked along the canal to Saint-Gobrien which is a tiny little village with an 11th century church which is slowly being restored.

This week we’ve mostly been doing admin things like getting french sim cards, hiring a carpet cleaner and cleaning the carpets so this weekend we thought we’d do something nice and drive to Bayeux to see the tapestry. The last time we visited it happened to be a January and the tapestry museum was closed. Bayeux is a lovely town in Normandy, quite close to the D-day beaches so with that and the tapestry it’s quite touristy however it’s still early in the season, not too many tourists yet, the perfect time in fact.

We did visit Omaha beach and the US and other cemeteries the first time we were here, it’s certainly thought provoking, particularly the cemeteries! But I feel no desire to purchase ww2 memorabilia.

Lovely place Bayeux, but it was quite chilly and rainy so we didn’t get around as much of it as we might have. I did manage to buy a woolly hat in the town!

This morning we went to the market, then after lunch drove to Auray and bought the correct length curtains at a bricolage there, then headed to the port of Saint-Goustan where incidentally Benjamin Franklin arrived on 3 December 1776 at the beginning of the US war of independence to seek military aid from Louis XVI. Its a very pretty port and there’s an artist there we quite like, Marc Chaubaron. We dropped by and bought a couple of things of his for the house, and an illustrated copy of Le Petit Prince for 4 euros. He’s an interesting chap, I was glad to see he’s still in business.

The house is heated with a number of ancient radiators and a large boiler which was installed not long before we bought the house but it’s quite a quirky thing and has given us endless fun over the years, not least because Monsieur Dany the man who maintained it for us was such a nice guy, he couldn’t have been more french looking with his twirly moustache, fairly short and round appearance, wildly waving arms and strange accent. Even the other French people in the village found him hard to understand apparently. Really nice man but unfortunately he retired and we had to find a new company. They sent round a young guy in his van with his little dog who kept us both quite busy looking after him, we enjoyed that mind you. Nice day here today, the neighbour across the road came out to empty a bucket of water and told me it was finally time for nettoyage de printemps. Fair enough, we’ve been doing quite a bit of cleaning ourselves. It’s great to see and feel the sun, everyone comes out from their hibernation and walks along the canal.

This afternoon we drove to Ploermel which has a big hardware store and bought some supplies, including a pair of curtains for the lounge but unfortunately because my writing is not the flashest we bought the too short ones, so that will be another trip tomorrow. All good fun though and we had trout for tea so I’m going to call that a win.

We stayed the night in Rennes at a nice little old fashioned hotel and picked up the car the next day. It turned out to be a Polestar which is a very nice car indeed but maybe a bit larger than you’d like for small french villages. It just fits in the garage with all of its sensors going bananas while you’re doing so.

The house was a bit of a shock, we did know it wasn’t going to be how we left it but even so, there’s a fair bit of work to do that’s for sure. We spent a couple of days cleaning and throwing out stuff, and we took a trip to Ikea yesterday to get some replacements for things that have gone missing or were unusable. The kitchen is now looking more like I’d like it so I feel we’ve made good progress.

It is very good to be back and the town is looking very pretty.