Gothenburg, Sweden

Heading north, my next stop was Gothenburg. The campsite I found, Lisebergs, was quite expensive (about £32 per night) but with good facilities and close enough to the city centre for easy biking. To the other side of the campsite was a vast network of forests, gravel tracks and wide river bends, a runner's paradise, and it gets packed with locals after work on a nice evening. Unfortunately, the rain was rather stop-start for most of my stay but I managed to clock up a good number of miles.

Gothenburg is Sweden's second city and the centre is split by a series of canals and the Gota River. North of river used to be the industrial harbour, an important port in it's day, but now the huge redundant cranes sit motionless on the docks. It is now a region with nothing of interest to visit. On the south side of the river, there are still plenty of smaller private yachts and the area has been spuced up with the addition of large sculptures as well as the Utkiken Building and the industrial style Opera House.

The City Hall is right in the middle of town in a square next to the canal. Outside is a statue of city founder Gustav Adolf pointing to the ground and saying "this is where I will build my town". These blue-green bronze statues seem to be a feature of Scandinavia in general but Gothenburg also features a few old buildings where the roof has been clad to a similar effect.

Other museums, sculptures and interesting architectural buildings of note are also located in the centre or towards the southern region of Vasastan. In the south of Vasastan is the Gotaplatsen Square surrounded by several museums and a sculpture of Poseiden. When it was unveiled, the sculptor was told to reduce the size of the poor bloke's genitals after it caused so much outrage!

Next to one of the canals is the Tradgardsforeningen (or Garden Society Park) which is a large area of flowers, gardens and water features. It even has a big conservatory with desert and tropical plants in. The park apparently gets full of locals later in the summer when the weather is nice.

The nightlife in Gothenburg is pretty quite and boring without much going on, much like Helsingborg really. Onwards towards Norway me thinks...

Helsingborg, Sweden

It only takes around an hour to get from Copenhagen to Helsingborg and there are now two ways to cross the Oresund (the channel of water between Denmark and Sweden). There is a bridge/tunnel combination from Copenhagen to Malmo in the south or a ferry from Helsingor to Helsingborg in the North. I decided to take the ferry as it was cheaper (320DKK/£40) than the tunnel (550DKK/£70).

My campsite was just south of Helsingborg in Raa Hahn but it was quite pricey (240SKr/£25 per night). I did get a nice spot though where I could look across the water and see Denmark. The Raa harbour is pretty busy for small yachts and boats and there are boats lining the banks of the canals for quite a way inland too. It is certainly a nice area to cycle through. I planned to have a barbeque for the first time on the edge of the water but the wind picked up and the clouds looked ominous so I decided to have it by the van instead - finishing just before the rain started.

It was windy and rainy pretty much from this point until I left Helsingborg but I found a gap in the weather to get out and see the town itself. The port of Helsingborg is much more commercial and not nearly as appealing but inland it still has plenty of history and old buildings. The town hall is located on the harbour with the statue of Magnus Stenbock (the man who led to the Swedes to take back the town from the Danes) erected outside.

Just up the street is the castle with it's fortified walls now turned into a water feature. The single tower in the centre is surrounded by grass and parklands and the fortress gives a great view over the harbour and city centre.

The horizontal rain put a stop to too much more exploring but now I head further north up the coast to Gothenburg.

Copenhagen, Denmark

It is a long drive from Hamburg to Copenhagen so my plan was to stop overnight en route on the western coast of Denmark. I stopped in the city of Esbjerg at a campsite which was unstaffed (as it was a Sunday). The city itself is a major port although completely devoid of life when I biked around the town. I therefore decided to grab a shower and head in-land for a free spot to spend the night. In the morning I left Jutland (the mainland) and crossed Funen into Zealand - these are Denmarks largest land masses. The bridge which connects Denmark together by road has a toll charge of about £25 and the strong cross winds make it a pretty scary drive in a high-top van.

I was planning to find a hostel in Copenhagen as they tend to be as cheap as campsites, unfortunately though it would cost around £40 a day to park the van in any of the nearby streets so I went to the Absalon Campsite on the edge of town which is a really nice site.

Copenhagen is one of the best cities I have ever been to, with friendly people, low pollution and litter, and low crime - although I did have my bike lights stolen. The city centre is a mix of modern buildings and classic danish architecture with a good mix of parks and canals. It is clearly an expensive place to live though - I paid 50 DKK for a beer (about £6.30) - and there are plenty of high-end shops, restraunts and art galleries. The rest of Denmark by comparison is very quiet and rural though, so the city does not really give an accurate account of normal Danish life.

I visited the Danish Design Museum, Danish Design Centre, Ripleys Believe It Or Not, Hans Christian Andersen Museum, The Little Mermaid, Kastellet, Cristiansborg, and Opera House. All of these are easily accessable from the city centre and many of them are free to enter.

Above: The Opera House as seen from the park across the bay.

Above: Views from the Kastellet

Above: The Mermaid, one of Copenhagen's biggest attractions. Surely a mermaid wouldn't have knees though?

Above: The two-headed cow from the Ripleys museum and a scale model of the Taj Mahal made from 300,000 matchsticks.

Copenhagen has plenty of bars, clubs and cafes. On Wednesday I visited The Viking House in town which was full of German students who had just finished their studies in Copenhagen before returning to Germany. And on Friday night I went to a small blues club in town with live music and drank with at the bar, mostly for free with the bar staff, into the small hours. It seems a very friendly place with very little of the trouble that dominates drinking in the UK.

After a long sleep, I headed across the ferry into Sweden.