International Rally in Denmark

(By Keith Mason - Centre 9)

We left Chesterfield at about 10.15 am on a bright, sunny June morning. The Virago 1100 was loaded to the gunnels with panniers, tent, bed rolls, sleeping bags etc., forming a comfortable armchair for Jane. 

It was a lovely, smooth ride, first across north Nottinghamshire to Newark, then down the A1, A14 to Ipswich, then the A12 and A120 to the ferry at Harwich, in warm, barmy sunshine. We got there in plenty of time, and went straight through the various ticket and passport checks onto the ship without having to queue up (very different from the return journey, of which more later!). Most of the VSOC members were already on board, as the Danish shipping line (DFDS Tor Line) had begun boarding at 4.00 pm. We rode the bike up the metal gangways onto the deck where the other bikes were already parked in front of us – what a sight! Then came the slightly worrying bit, which I remembered from the trip to Holland a couple of years ago – when you have to lash down your bike with the straps provided. I had put the bike on the centre stand, thinking this would be more stable, as the side stand on the Virago is arguably not as secure as on the DragStar and the WildStar (had visions of the bike rolling off the side stand). I have since been advised (on the return journey) that the side stand is the best option on a ship, as the bike might roll forward off the centre stand in rough weather. I am not totally convinced about this; I know of at least one rider who put her Virago 1100 on the side stand, and another apart from me who used the centre stand, so I guess either is okay.

As it happened, the crossing was extremely smooth, and we were hardly aware of being on a ship, so there was no danger of bikes rolling off stands.

We had a great cabin to ourselves, with a sea view, our own shower and toilet, etc. We paid a bit more for the sea view, but it was worth it (and all of the internal cabins were already taken by the time we booked, so we had no choice, anyway). Into the bar for a Danish lager – a bit expensive, but that didn’t stop us downing several. Then we had a splendid meal – a buffet / smorgasbord where you could pick from a wide choice of hors d’oevres, and either hot or cold main courses, puddings and sweets, and cheese and biscuits. We piled our plates with prawns, raw herring, salmon, lovely Danish seeded bread, and that was just for starters! Then a bean and pork dish, or chicken; fried wedges of potato, choice of vegetables or salad, followed by a chocolate muffin, and some cream and flan concoctions. No room for the cheese and biscuits. There was live music in one of the bars, but we retired to our cabin, thoroughly stuffed and pleasantly tired.

The next morning we gave the full breakfast a miss, having pigged it somewhat the previous night, and sufficed with a Danish pastry (what else?) and a cup of coffee. We soon arrived in the port of Esbjerg and got our first glimpse of Denmark. Down to the deck where the bikes were situated, to unlash them. This was not a roll-on, roll-off ferry. As we were near the back, we were off fairly quick, as everyone disembarked the same way they had come onto the ship, which meant most people had to turn their bikes round.

Once off the ferry, we all forgathered with our leader, Kevin (Hoyte), who divided us into three groups, the idea being that not too many bikes would arrive at the service station for a fill-up at the same time. We were in the middle group, and we pretty quickly lost more than half of our riders once we set off on the E20 motorway. We did eventually come together again at one of the stops, though by that time I think the three groups had got a bit muddled up.
We journeyed up the fairly busy autoroute, bypassing Middelfart (interesting name), then across an amazing 14 kilometre causeway and bridge over the sea from the middle island of Denmark to the eastern island, where Copenhagen is situated. We left the E20 and went north on smaller roads through the almost empty Danish countryside. Denmark has a population of only five million, and the land area of England, so there is plenty of space and little traffic compared to our busy roads.

At length, in the late afternoon we arrived at the entrance to the campsite in Klintebjerg, only to discover that we had to run the gauntlet of a rather tricky downward path of deep sand (having been previously assured by President Kevin that this infamous track had been fixed!). One of the Danish organisers (the founder of the Danish club, in fact), thoughtfully filmed each bike individually as it bumped and swerved down the sandy path, in the hope that someone would fall off for the camera. Fortunately I made it down to the reception tent on our overladen Virago without disgracing myself, while Jane walked down the path. We were each greeted with a nip of something light brown, very strong and warming (some sort of shnapps?) and given a goody bag with badge, pen, a Yamaha bike brochure in Danish, details of the rally, meal tickets, etc.
We set about finding a pleasant pitch for the tent, hopefully with a bit of shade, as by this time it was baking hot, and remained so all week. John and Rosie and Dave and Deb (also from Centre 9) camped off the main area near some bushes, but we decided to find somewhere more shady in the pine woods. 

We were among the first into this bit of the site under the trees and near the beach, but having not erected the tent for some time, we had to put some considerable effort into the erection, before we realised what we were doing wrong, by which time we had been joined by Roger Carter, the Rep. of the Solent Mad Axemen (Centre 16), some other Centre 16 members, and some Germans, all of whom had no trouble with their erections and also got their tents up before us.

Having finally succeeded in pitching the tent to our satisfaction and unloaded the sleeping bags, inflatable bedrolls, and most of the stuff in the panniers, we made for the bar and sunk a well-earned glass or two of Danish beer. The beer was reasonably priced (for Denmark), and was sold theoretically in 33cl measures, but the bar staff sometimes topped up the plastic cups nearly to the top, so you got a bit more for your money. I thoroughly approved of this, as I have always been a stickler for full measure in English pubs, coming originally from the south of England (I’m a cockney), where real ale is served flattish. It has always amazed me how Derbyshire and South Yorkshire folk are quite often prepared to put up with short measure, for the sake of a frothy head on a pint. But that’s a different story – back to Denmark.

We were soon getting into conversation with some Danes, and trying to learn some basic Danish. I discovered that beer is ‘ol’ in Danish (like ‘ale’) – with a line through the ‘o’, and two beers is pronounced something like ‘too ol’ in Danish, so now we had all the language we needed, although I did also try to learn how to count up to ten in Danish. Here are a few more expressions I learnt:

‘Hej her gaar det godt.’ – ‘Hello, here it is fine.’
‘Hvordan har du det?’ – ‘How are you?’
‘Tak jeg har det godt.’ - ‘Thank you, I am fine.’

The most useful word was ‘Tak’ – thank you. People were always amazed that we could even say this much in Danish.

It was cool and shady most of the day where we were camping, so the tent didn’t get too hot, but there were a lot of insect critters, and some of them decided to eat us for their breakfast, lunch and dinner. Most unpleasant among these were insect ticks which looked exactly like little crabs. I found one of them burrowing into my inner thigh, and at first thought I had caught genital crabs! Rather embarrassing, so we didn’t like to mention it to anyone to ask if others had experienced the same thing. When we examined our bodies more closely, Jane and I discovered that we each had several of these ticks on us, on our backs, stomachs, legs and arms. They were impossible to pull off just with fingers once they had started burrowing into the skin with their front pincers, and we had to cut them off each other with a pen knife. Shades of Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in the film ‘The African Queen’! (although I think Hump and Kate uses salt to get the leeches off).

Since coming home, we have got a bit more concerned about these ticks, as we have found out that they can carry Lyme Disease. I phoned up our local G.P. to find out if we needed to get a blood test or anything, but I think we are in the clear. But anybody from the English VSOC who went to Denmark maybe ought to look out for the symptoms, which are flu-like, and also include aching joints and muscles, and a rash on the skin called erythema migrans - see: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/lyme/ld_LymeDiseaseRashPhotos.htm

We arrived at Klintebjerg and settled into the campsite a day early, on the Thursday. The International Rally proper didn’t get going until the Friday, when there was a good live band performing in the evening. It doesn’t take much to make bikers happy, and this band really had the right idea, playing ‘Born to be Wild’ several times, as well as various Stones numbers such as ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ and a lot of other Rock and Rhythm and Blues tracks.

Unfortunately the band on the Saturday night, although technically competent, definitely didn’t have the right idea about what bikers like. There were two female vocalists and a male vocalist in the Saturday night band, and they warbled numbers by the Jackson Five such as ‘ABC’, as well as a selection of other frankly awful songs from the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and Nineties. I hardly recognised a single tune all evening, as they played no Rock music or R&B stuff. I think there was something by Robbie Williams at one stage, and I’m not knocking Robbie, if that’s what you like. At least it was recognisable. This lack of suitable music on Saturday night in the main pavilion tent tended to kill the party stone dead, and many folk retreated to their tents or stood around the barbecue fire cooking sausages, or went onto the beach to have their own parties. The Germans lit a large fire on the beach with logs from the pine wood, as it was quite chilly that evening, and Jane and I joined them for a while, and tried to make conversation, although this was somewhat difficult, as we don’t speak more than half a dozen words of German, and they didn’t speak any English. Later, we met up with some Germans again in the main marquis tent, and managed to communicate a bit better this time, as one of them (who hadn’t been on the beach) did speak some English. We ended up sharing their ‘Party-Seven’ type large can of German beer, which they had brought into the tent to drink, in spite of the bar selling Danish beer at one end. This was very kind of them, and felt a bit like ‘hush-beer’, but we certainly wouldn’t have dobbed them in to the Danish bar staff, in any case (see photo).

Earlier in the evening I had attempted the famous ‘nail game’ (see photo), which appeared to be so loved by our Danish hosts. The rules of this (roughly) are that you bang each other’s six inch nails down into a large tree trunk, but you don’t hit your own nail – other players hit that. The owner of the first nail down (i.e. flush with the top of the log) has to pay for the nails, and the owner of the second nail down has to pay for the round of drinks. A fiendish Dane opposite me kept going for my nail, and I was concerned that I might end up paying for the round of drinks, but fortunately a very tired and emotional (very well-oiled) large Dane had a disagreement with another Dane, which nearly came to fisticuffs, and he was led off in a huff. This meant that one of the players had dropped out, so the whole game was null and void. I can’t say I was sorry! I supped more of the Danish beer and congratulated myself on my narrow escape. I preferred the dark beer or ‘classic’ Danish beer to the lager, as I am not really a great lager drinker.

I find one of the most interesting and enjoyable things about international rallies is the opportunity to speak to people of different nationalities. We chatted to the two Poles who came (see photo of Jane with a Polish member!), to plenty of Danish folk, and to several riders from the Netherlands. There was also a good contingent from Finland, and naturally some Swedes, as this part of Denmark is close to Sweden. There were no Norwegians (surprisingly), and no French, Spanish or Italian riders. We discussed why this might be with some of our new Danish and German friends, and decided it must be to do with a difference of culture. Maybe the French and southern Europeans just don’t like cruisers, and of course the Italians have their own bike makes such as Laverda and Moto-Guzzi when they’re not riding scooters. The absence of the Norwegians was a bit of a mystery, but I gathered from one of our Danish hosts that there had been a falling out with the Norwegians, possibly over a rally in Norway being held at the same time.

The sanitary arrangements – (i.e. the toilets and showers) were – well, if you really want to know – things were a bit grim in this department. I had a shower, and the shower head seemed to be aimed outside the cubicle and half way to Sweden, which meant if you didn’t put your shoes and clothes well out of reach, they got soaked. The mens’ toilets were quickly blocked, most of the cisterns didn’t flush, and we chaps ended up having to use a hose to flush each WC before the next person could use it…. I think the ladies had one or two cubicles complete with wash-basin and shower along side the WC, but again there weren’t enough. I have to compare this with the proliferation of excellent Portaloos at the Northampton International Rally last year, and conclude that we did better than the Danes in this respect – well done the Outriders!

(I mostly chose to pee in the trees after nightfall, and this could be when and where the insect ticks dropped on me, the little blighters).
On the Friday we walked up the sandy track to the local shop, where we purchased some food for lunch, and naturally a few ready-cooled beers. The first official meal was the evening meal on Friday, which was good, but I can’t for the life of me remember what we had. It was chille con carne on the Saturday night, which was also good.

On Saturday there was a ride-out (I’m afraid we chickened out of this, not wanting to take the bike up the sandy track until we had to) and there were also several games organised, including a slow riding competition. There was a competition for the best bike, and an English bike won it – a superb Wild Star with suspension that could be lowered or raised hydraulically, blue lighting around some of its parts, and various bits and pieces beautifully customised in an understated way – the bike was called ‘The Hogslayer’ – need I say more? There were other bikes that were well worth a look at, including ‘The Highwayman’ (a Wild Star – also from the UK) with ‘Stand and Deliver’ painted on the tank, and some really good highwayman graphics, and a Virago 1100 with a lovely paint-job in metallic silver-blue, with Chinese and Dragon motifs, and a teddy stuck under the sissy bar! Jane voted for this one.

We had to leave on Sunday, when the rally ended. Many VSOC members went to the Yamaha cruiser club near Copenhagen for a couple of nights, but we decided to venture off on our own, having met someone who told us about an attractive campsite on the island of Thuro, near Svendborg, south of Odense. We found the campsite and it was indeed pleasant, again right on the coast, like Klintebjerg, where the international rally was held. The campsite on Thuro island had a good shop with a fridge full of Danish beers of different types, which we enjoyed sampling. On Monday we went into Svendborg (a medium-sized coastal town) for a meal. We found a cheapish (for Denmark) bar which did good food – we had a chilli con carne with crème fresh, side salad and bread, for about £5 per head, as this was one of the only things we could understand on the menu. The beer was about £3 for a large glass – nearly a pint. 

When we went to pay for the campsite on Tuesday morning, we discovered that we had to buy a camping card (about £8), similar to the French Camping Carnet idea; this meant that the two nights camping for our little tent and a motorbike cost us about £38 altogether, which seemed a bit excessive, particularly as the hot showers were extra! When we take our caravan away, even in a top-notch Caravan Club site in England, with electrical hook-up and very good facilities, we don’t pay more than £12 per night at the height of the summer season.

So Denmark is not a cheap country, but we found the Danish people really friendly and enjoyed the whole experience of the rally. We think we might go to Sweden next year, although this is reputed to be even more expensive than Denmark! We are looking forward to the day when the international rally will be held in Poland – but now Poland is in the EU, no doubt the price of beer in Poland will not stay cheap forever… C’est la vie!

We got back to the ferry in Esbjerg on Tuesday afternoon, having gone the wrong way at one point and left the E20 on entirely the wrong road, so that we would have ended up in Germany! We had only gone about ten miles out of our way, which was still a bit worrying, as we were nearly out of petrol. We got back to the next service station on the E20 without running out of fuel however, and had also managed to have our lunch at a food station when we had gone the wrong way. The man running the café inexplicably ran up three meals on our bill, including an expensive steak meal, even though there were obviously only two of us. Fortunately I checked the till receipt when we had first ordered the meals and managed to cancel the steak and get our money back. 

When we finally got to the ferry, everyone was queuing up in the baking heat. We were kept for about two hours in the hot sun for no very good reason by the Danish shipping line (DFDS), all the bikes and riders lined up and panting to get on the ship, most of us with no water and nowhere to get a drink, and some (those who came later) with no shade for bikes or riders. (See photo). This was not very good; they could easily have begun loading us biker folk early, as they did at Harwich on the way over.

On the sailing back to England, we were awoken in our cabin at about 2.00 am by the captain, asking if there was a doctor on board, as they had a medical emergency. We found out more about this the following morning. One of our VSOC members had unfortunately been taken ill – Denise Burr from Centre 15, wife of Ron ‘Rocket’ Burr, the Deputy Rep. for Centre 15. I understand Denise suffered a bleed into the brain and had to be evacuated by helicopter to Holland. We were very sorry indeed to hear about this. There was a collection by the Centre 15 Rep., Ray Nicholson, in the bar on the ferry, to help Ron with the expense of the journey back to Holland, where he would have to go as soon as he got back to Harwich. I gather that over £800 was raised by the VSOC members on the ferry. Unfortunately Denise passed away in the early hours of Friday morning with Ronnie at her side. The family would like any money to go to the charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer. A very sad ending to an otherwise excellent rally.

Keith Mason 
Centre 9 member