Biking in Bornholm

Alex and I before the final stretch of our 65 km bike ride!

One of my priorities for my semester abroad is to experience the natural beauty of Denmark and try to spend as much time outside as possible. After spending the past three summers in the mountains (and spending all year counting down the days until I can go back to the mountains), I was admittedly a little nervous about studying abroad in a city and in a country with no mountains whatsoever. However, as much as I do miss being in the mountains, I’ve really enjoyed learning to appreciate Denmark’s outdoor community, which pretty much consists of biking and kayaking. Though I do bike some at home, I’ve completely fallen in love with biking here and find it to be not only such an enjoyable commute but also a great way to experience Copenhagen and feel like one of the Danes! Denmark is also known for its wonderful biking outside of the cities, so this past weekend, a group of us from the Outdoor Living Learning Community decided to go to Bornholm on one of DIS’s adventure trips.  One of the unique aspects about DIS as a study abroad program is that they actually offer their own adventure trips all over Denmark and Europe. The trips are very reasonably priced and, in my opinion, definitely worth it, as they organize everything for you! Plus you get to go with your friends and meet other DIS students on the way. I’m doing the Explore the Norway Fjords trip in just a few weeks and I really couldn’t be more excited! This weekend some friends and I did the Bornholm Bike Trip, one of DIS’s largest and most popular adventure trips.

Bornholm’s location in Denmark

Bornholm is a small Danish island off the coast of Sweden. It is famous for its beaches, beautiful rocky coast, delicious ice cream and signature smoked herring, and it is a very popular summer vacation spot for Danes as well as home to around 40,000 permanent residents. My International Law professor actually lives on Bornholm and flies to class every week! For those too cheap to fly (like us), the best way to get to Bornholm is on the ferry. On Friday, we took an overnight ferry from Køge (south of Copenhagen) to Rønne, the capital of Bornholm. The ferry trip itself was about 6 hours, from 12 am to 6 am, meaning we were all quite sleep-deprived when we arrived in Bornholm. However, the ferry was easily the nicest ferry I’ve ever been on (and I thought the Alaska ferries were quite fancy!) and I did manage to get at least a few hours of sleep. We then drove  from Rønne to Gudhjem, a beautiful small town on the Northern coast. Despite our exhaustion, after unloading our bags at the hostel and eating a quick breakfast, Kim, Alex, Emily, Meg and I all took off for a long day of biking!

Map of Bornholm with the major routes!

We had decided ahead of time that we would try to do the ‘Killer Route’ on our first day there, a 65 km journey along the East and Southern coasts of the island and then back through the center that gives perhaps the best sense of the varied terrain and culture of Bornholm.  The day began with a 14 km ride along the beautiful coast to Svaneke, a small town on the northeastern corner of the island known to have the best ice cream and herring in Bornholm. Unfortunately, as we had gotten off to quite an early start, the ice cream and herring places were not open, but we did spend a few minutes watching a really cool glass-blowing demonstration (Bornholm is also famous for its glass art). We then biked another 15-ish kilometers to Dueodde Beach, Bornholm’s most popular beach, famous for its extremely fine sand. The sun came out right as we reached the ocean and we enjoyed some snacks and laughs on the water. As we were all using rental bikes, at this point we had lost two of our five members to broken bikes. The person we rented our bikes from spent the entire day just driving in circles around the island, dropping off functional bikes and picking up broken bikes from stranded DISers! Fortunately, we all managed to group up while we waited at the beach, but that was not the end of our bike woes of the day!

In front of the water in Svaneke

Team Amagerbrogade at Dueodde Beach

Jump photo success!

Following Dueodde Beach, we started our inland trek to Aakirkeby. The rocky coast and coastal towns we had biked through in the morning turned to farmland, forest and adorable little cottages as we headed through the country back to Gudhjem. We stopped in Aakirkeby for a delicious lunch of salmon sandwiches, then braved the 18 km bike back. Naturally, our final 18 km ended up being the most adventurous of the day. Only about 10 minutes after we left Aakirkeby, Emily’s bike broke for the third time, so we all spent about forty-five minutes on the side of the road, trying to fix her bike. Fortunately, a kind local Bornholmer spotted us and brought his tools over to help us get the chain back on. We were successful briefly until the bike broke again, but at this point we had fortunately run into the DIS tour leaders who nicely agreed to try to fix the bike and let us continue our bike back. The final 15 km were largely through the woods, and as there were absolutely no trail signs, we did a lot of looping back around to try to find our way. After about an hour (and two more broken chains), we finally crested a hill and saw the ocean in front of us. After 40 miles of biking, the final cruise downhill back into Gudhjem was quite exciting, and we all spent the hour or so before dinner stretching on the green by the water just in front  of our hostel.

Some photos I took while biking, in approximately chronological order:

Biking in Bornholm

After eating dinner at the hostel, the five of us got ice cream from the local candy store and enjoyed watching the sunset over Gudhjem. By 9 pm we were all completely wiped out, exhausted from both our long day of biking and from not really sleeping the night before on the ferry! It was definitely an early night for almost everyone on the trip.

The five of us enjoying a sunset ice cream at the Gudhjem harbor

Gudhjem lit up after sunset

The next morning we woke up to a misty cold rain, but we figured we should still explore the island! We decided to head up the northern coast in the opposite direction to see a different part of Bornholm. Our first stop was Helligdomsklipperne, a beautiful park of sea cliffs just 5 km from Gudhjem. I grew up on the rocky coast of Maine and I was so excited to be back in another gorgeous rocky coastal area. We walked all through the sea cliffs, taking lots of pictures over the water, and we even explored a little sea cave located at the base of the cliffs! Of course, after we left Hellingdomskipperne, it immediately began to downpour, making the 14 km hilly bike to Hammershus a bit brutal. I usually am fine with rain and cold weather, but it was definitely a bit hard to enjoy the beautiful views when I was completely soaked through and quite cold! However, we were able to warm up briefly at a café in Hammershus before heading out to explore the ruins. Hammershus is an old medieval castle that has now been reduced to just a few stone towers. It is located on a hill right near the northern tip of the island and the views from the top were pretty spectacular, even in the rain. After about half an hour at the ruins, we were all decidedly cold and wet and ready to return, and we sped through the 18 km back to Gudhjem.

Looking towards Gudhjem from Helligsdomsklipperne on a rainy day

Family photo at Helligdomsklipperne

Heading into the sea cave at Helligdomsklipperne

Castle ruins in the rain at Hammershus, the northern tip of Bornholm

Our final hours in Bornholm consisted of warm showers and lots and lots of food. Kim, Meg and I each had perhaps the best pancakes we’d ever had in our lives at the pancake place, and we all enjoyed the famous Bornholm soft-serve ice cream before getting on the bus back to Rønne. The ferry ride back was much shorter as we went straight to Sweden and then drove back to Copenhagen, arriving back in Amager around 10:30.  All in all, it was a fantastic yet exhausting weekend, but totally worth the trip. I loved getting to see Bornholm, considered one of Denmark’s highlights, and it was wonderful to spend all day outside, even in the rain! As a proud geoscience nerd, I was even excited to finally get to see some bedrock (there’s not a whole lot of igneous bedrock to be found around Copenhagen). I also really loved the biking and it definitely made me motivated to try to bike more both here in Copenhagen and also in Carrboro when I go back to North Carolina in the spring. Definitely worth the trip!

The five of us partaking in a Danish photo tradition: happy, sad tiger!

HAPPY

SAD

TIGER