26th April 2017. Roskilde and Hornbæk, Denmark.

Roskilde was our main port of call today, we wanted to see the Viking longboats in the museum there.  We intended moving up country after we’d visited Roskilde but as we weren’t sure how long we’d be there, that part of the plan was rather fluid.

I was surprised (and pleased) to wake up in time to catch the sun rising over the fjord and, lucky old me, the sun put on a great show this morning.  I had under estimated how cold it would be out there, but I’ve been doing that for the whole of this trip so no surprise there.  I stayed out as long as I could but the cold eventually got the better of me.

After I’d thawed out and we’d had breakfast we had a little stroll over to the fjord, it was actually quite a speedy little stroll because it was still perishing outside, then we set off in the van to Roskilde.

As we left the car park that we’d stayed in overnight we assumed we’d be greeted by road works when we reached the main road however all the bollards had gone and to our amazement there was absolutely nothing to suggest there had ever been anyone working on the road yesterday except for the beautifully re-laid road!

The only thing they hadn’t finished was grading the tarmac into the adjoining lanes so we had to bump up on to the road and hope we didn’t knock the spare wheel off, as is our wont!  The road  was super smooth to drive on, what busy little bees they’d been during the night.

It only took 15 minutes to get to the Viking Ship Museum.

There was an outdoor section to the museum which had some interesting exhibits and a boat yard where craftsmen were building reconstructions of the five Viking ships that were exhibited inside.   They were working with the type of tools that the Vikings would have used and were building the boats in exactly the same way.

There were full scale reconstructions of each of the five  boats moored up in the harbour.

As we started looking around outside it began to spit with rain and as it was lunchtime we went into the on site cafe for a bit of warmth and some food.

We both had sandwiches and coffee.  Even in the cafe there was information written up about the food the Vikings used to eat and what they brought back with them from their travels.  Apparently the food in the cafe was made with ingredients that the Vikings would have had available.

The sandwiches were delicious and they were topped with the gorgeous preserved  onions we had enjoyed eating in Sweden, I really must find a recipe for those and the other pickles the Scandinavians eat, they’re SO tasty.

When we’d finished eating we walked across the bridge to the museum.  Initially it didn’t look very big but there was loads of  information to take in which was presented in interesting ways.

We saw a film which showed the remains of the boats being recovered and the painstaking process of drying them out without damaging the wood even more.

The archaeologists had to wash off the mud from the wood as it was retrieved from the sea bed, how they managed to do that without wearing any gloves is beyond me, their hands must have been frozen!

We walked along beside the remains of the boats, it was great to be able to see them and understand how big they actually were.

Outside in the fjord we could see a ship in full sail.  It brought back wonderful memories of the Viking boat we sailed in at the Lofotr Viking museum in Bostad on the Lofoten Islands in Norway and the lovely Norwegian lady and her son who chatted to us during that trip.

They had an area set up inside the museum building to look like a dock with the front part of two boats placed as if they were moored beside a jetty, there was an opening on one side so that people could walk on to the boats.

The museum had supplied a selection of Viking style clothing to be tried on, it had to be done!  After a lot of nagging from me Darren was finally persuaded to try a cape on.

Outside the weather had improved so we went out to have a look at the reconstructed boats.

We ended up spending three hours at the museum and then we nipped over the road to have a quick look around Roskilde as two of our sons, Morgan and Gethan, had suggested we visited the town.  I’m glad they mentioned it, it is a beautiful town.

An hour later we went back to the van via the gardens which gave us a great view down over the fjord.  We only had time to walk around the area surrounding the church but there were so many beautiful buildings, statues and planted areas to look at that we could happily have spent much longer there, unfortunately we weren’t sure where we were going to be spending the night and it was already 5.00 p.m, time to skedaddle.

We left Roskilde on the road we’d driven in on and passed the lane we’d bumped out of this morning, it was jolly lucky we didn’t need to stay there again this evening because it was blocked off by a roadworks lorry!

We drove on to Frederiksborg Slot which looked absolutely stunning and I’d hoped to visit it the next day but we couldn’t see any parking bays large enough for our motorhome so we carried on to Fredensborg Palace where we had the same issue.

Our next port of call was Kronborg Castle, I’d found somewhere to stay there but we couldn’t work out how to get to that area because the road the SAT NAV wanted to take us down was blocked off!  Oh!  Oh!  Time for a rethink!

We stopped in the car park opposite the castle and had a quick look on Park4Night which showed a parking area 15 minutes away beside the sea so we drove off to find that.

I am so glad we weren’t able to find anywhere to park previously, this spot was FANTASTIC.  We were sheltered from the sea breeze by the dunes but we could see the sea and a small harbour.  The stop offs at the various castles and palaces had been quite fortuitous, it had given me the opportunity to photograph them but now we were stopping at a superb location.

We were going to have a cup of tea get the lap tops out but the weather was so nice I suggested we had a quick walk along the beach first.

The walk wasn’t as quick as we’d intended either, the beach was made up of golden sand and carpets of white shells in a 2 metre wide strip along the water’s edge which crunched as we stepped on them.

We explored one way before going back the other way to look at the harbour, what a GREAT decision, while we were walking round I spied an ice cream sign and we discovered a shop selling Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and coffee.  We took our ice creams and sat by the harbour in the last of the evening sun.

When we’d finished them we sauntered back to our van and watched the sun setting over the sea.  What a perfect end to a perfect day!