Notes : Daniel Ridings


September 19, 2013

Lindome-Odense by bike

Filed under: Bicycles,Randonneuring — at 6:08 pm

All year I have wanted to cycle to Odense, but it was difficult to fit it in. The round trip is a bit more than 540 km. Almost every weekend since the middle of April has seen brevets. The randonneur season started then. It was difficult to imagine riding 540 km in the middle of the week, having one day, Friday, as a rest day and then getting up early on Saturday to ride a long brevet. The further along in the season, the longer the brevets were. It was just hard to fit in.

The last brevet was in the latter part of August. It was a quiet 200km brevet so I was rested well enough by Tuesday when I would leave for Odense.

Half of the fun is planning the trip. I had never ridden through that part of Denmark, Dyreland, and from Aarhus to Odense, I was only superficially familiar with the route that the sportative Aarhus – Köpenhamn took. It was a bit longish and I wanted a more direct route.

Basecamp

I planned my route with Garmin’s Basecamp. I used Openfietsmap, a cycling map from The Netherlands. I also had Velomap from Velomap.org. Velomap is good, but it has problems across country borders. Openfietsmap, the section called N2, has all of Scandinavia in one map. It is not updated very often, in fact I cannot see that it has ever been updated, but I would be staying on well-known roads (I thought) so it was current enough.

Playing with the trip from Grenå to Odense was the fun part. The basic way points would be Grenå, Aarhus, Horsens, Vejle, Middelfart and then Odense. Aarhus is Denmark’s second largest city, so I paid particular attention to getting from the north to the south side. There is really not much to worry about. Being a university town, bike paths and signs are well-placed.

Lindome – Varberg

The route to Varberg is more or less just a straight line down to the ferry terminal. The only thing I had to take into consideration was timing. The ferry leaves at 08:50 and latest check-in is 30 minutes before, 08:20. That was not a problem I figured it would take 2.5 hours, normally (28 km/h average) and I just added some time to account for things like a flat tire or headwind. It didn’t really matter if I pushed myself harder than I normally would on a long trip because I would have 4 hours to rest up on the ferry over to Varberg.

Grenå – Odense

My first concern was avoiding the motorways between Grenå and Aarhus. Grenåvej, route 15, turns into a motorway at one point between the two places. On other stretches, it is the only useful route. So I wanted to leave route 15, going west, at Tåstrup and take the older Grenåvej, which runs parallel with the motorway a little south. It takes you through Bjødstrup, Rønde, changes names to Århusvej, Ugelbølle, Rødskov, and then into Aarhus, after crossing route 15 a couple of times, from the north.

It was a good enough way. But when I came back, it was dark and with trucks going the same direction as me, headed for the same ferry, I decided to look for a route more to the north, on smaller roads, the next time.

I chose to get out of Aarhus on route 433. There are basically two other alternatives, to the south, through Odder or to the north, through Skanderborg. Both looked like they would be slightly longer and route 433 looked like a straight shot, a straight shot for me and all the people getting off work and leaving Aarhus. There are places where it turns into a four lane highway with a division in the middle, much like a motorway. At one point I actually asked someone if cycling was even allowed on the road. It was. It just turns into four lanes around a couple of towns.

What I now know, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, is that when you are travelling south and see a bicycle sign for “Horsens”, take it. It will turn up around Tranbjerg. The same travelling north. A sign for Århus will turn up around Solbjerg. Take it. The one around Solbjerg will take you off through town, but just go with the flow.

The road between Tranbjerg and Solbjerg runs parallel with 433 but there is much less traffic and the traffic that is there is not the kind that is impatiently rushing home after work.

Once I left Solbjerg, cycling from Århus towards Horsens, the traffic became less frantic. But the first time I made the trip it sure did seem like quite a hike between Århus and Horsens; between Grenå and Århus too, for that matter.

The actual tracks got broken up. I didn’t stop the timer in Varberg, a battery went dead half-way across Dyrsland, things like that. They are still kind of interesting to see.

This is the first stretch, the first time. Lindome-Varberg:

Then from Grenå to Odense:

This could get long … I’ll break it up and stop here for now.

 

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