The Carbon Cycle

We had the noble intention of setting off bright and early. However a brief peek out of the hostel window revealed an interesting site - it seemed we had been transported into Gulliver’s travels. - there was a miniature village next to the hostel, which we delighted in setting up all sorts of ridiculous camera shots in.

We got going, and in our guilt to make up all the time spent faffing around in the village, we nearly flattened a large group of german pensioners - many cries of ‘Schnell, schnell, the British are coming!’

We passed over the older of Middlefarts two bridges, in a day dense with fog, and cycled down a long wooded track, onto the coast of Fynen, and up onto Cycle Route 6. This track was particularly pleasant; long, rolling hills that reminded us of the english countryside, winding through fields and wind turbines, all poking out through the mist.

Lucy knees continued to hurt, so we had to add more frozen raspberries to Lucy’s knees in order to get her all the way to Odense. We decided that if Lance Armstrong had to put frozen fruit on his knees, he would probably choose raspberries.

Having passed through the scenic side of Fynen, we entered some dark and wooded part of the track, rather like the blair witch project - and were even more put off by the thoroughly confusing signage in the woods - no love for the Danish cycling route administration, who caused to have endless debates about which route to take.



We finally found ourselves on the outskirts of Odense, rather cold and quite damp. We brought a couple of cakes and bottles of wine for our hosts - the lovely Mads and Sarah, who we arrived at about 6, earlier than any other day. Mads and Sarah were both couchsurfers, and it turned out had hosted over 50 people in their time. Mads had googled Lucy after not seeing a profile pic or references on her couchsurfing, and read all about The Carbon Cycle; impressed with our mission, he arranged for a local newspaper to send a journalist and photographer to do a piece about us tomorrow morning - what a legend! After a wonderful meal cooked by Mads and Sarah, we interviewed the pair of them, who both made excellent, articulate subjects with English that put ours to shame.

After faffing around for far too long in the morning, we left rather late – nearly 11:30! We headed for our halfway point, Kolding, and then onto Frederica our hostel stop for the night.

Setting off it quickly became clear that the terrain would be substantially more hilly than yesterday – or as hilly as it’s possible to get in Denmark. Lucy’s knee continued to hurt, so we attempted to find a bag of frozen peas, as this had eased the pain previously. Instead we settled for frozen raspberries and Lucy cycled for the day around Denmark with a bag of frozen raspberries strapped to her knee. That rationale here was that raspberries are more tasty to eat once defrosted – waste not, want not and everything!

Once in Kolding we had one of the best cups of hot chocolate any of us had ever tasted, and Ben brought new pedals, as one of his seized up almost completely, and his attempts to fix it had previously failed.

We carried on through the southeastern side of Jutland, lost track of the cycle route and spent far longer on a busy main road than any of us had really wanted to, and went up and down some actually quite interesting terrain. We discovered the real knack of dealing with hills, which is to build up as much momentum as possible prior to hitting it, and then quickly switch the gears down as we power up the hill. The hills are so small in Denmark that by the time you’ve done all that, you’re practically at the top already. 

Arriving in Frederica, we had one of the weirdest coincidences of the trip when we met Mads, the kind man who is offering to put us up tomorrow night at Odensee in the supermarket while we bought our supper. (http://www.couchsurfing.org/)

We arrived at the nearly deserted, but thoroughly gorgeous and very modern hostel at around 6:30, cooked a very tasty vegetable stew, drank some wine, marveled at the vending machines which dispensed beer, wrote this blog and then went to bed! http://www.hihostels.com/dba/hostels-Fredericia-016037.en.htm

Day 3 dawned bright and early – or it would have done had we had a window in our cabin! After dragging ourselves out of an unseasonably good nights sleep, we went to breakfast (which some of us paid for), ran into Jonathon and Nancy from the Campaign Against Climate Change and chatted about agriculture and associated greenhouse gases, and in what form the demanded 1 million green jobs would take were they to ever materialise.

After hastily scoffing down as much of the buffet as we could, we went to our meeting with the Captain – or rather we went to reception, and they rang the bridge, who sent someone down to let us up. We met him and his first officer while the ship seemed to run itself. They graciously indulged our childish behaviour around all the very expensive equipment, while Lucy demanded the Captain’s hat and attempted to take control of the vessel. The Captain explained the workings of the ship, and even let us press some of the buttons, sounding the ship’s horns and alarms and turning on and off some of the navigation lights above the bridge – they call it the Christmas tree.

We also interviewed Chris High, a lecturer at the Open University, who specialises in systems thinking, but who is a keen scientist and a recent convert to activism. He was always a green living cyclist, but has now taken the step into full on campaigning, and is a part of the Creative Climate Project. This is a mass observation project tracking cultural responses to climate science and data, in conjunction with Jo Smith (http://www.open2.net/creativeclimate/index.html). 

After freewheeling very fast down the exit ramp from the ferry we found ourselves for the first time in Denmark. Despite knowing full well that people drive on the right on the continent, we still managed to get ourselves nearly killed by oncoming traffic, but were hugely impressed by the wide and clearly marked cycle paths – some of them even had a whole kerb between us and the road! Best of all however were the separate traffic lights at some of the junctions, which let cyclists get a head start on all the motorised traffic.

We plugged onward, well into the night in order to find our first hostel at Vejen. We even got a little lost on the way. Whilst carrying our some much needed bike maintenance, we bumped into Mark Robbins from the RSPB (http://rspbcop15.tumblr.com/), who straightened Ben’s wonky front wheel, and came to dinner with us whilst his team mate retrieved his passport.

We had a slightly inebriated time at the local boozer, where a somewhat portly retired policeman repeatedly attempted to feel up both Lucy and Lorraine – much to their disgust. We also sought medical advice about Lucy’s knee, as she had inured it a few days prior to setting off. Medical Advice (Ben’s Uncle) recommend Lucy not continue the trip – Lucy decided to think about this untit he morning (no priozes for guessing the outcome of that decision!)

The bar was the closest thing that any of us had ever seen to a real life version of Moe’s Tavern in The Simpsons. Having survived the experience we returned to the hostel, and to bed.

After a chilled evening in the B+B we set off in pouring rain to visit the Recycle depot in Colchester where we met Derek. Derek gave us a whistlestop tour of the workshops and the warehouse stacked full of bikes. They were preparing for a shipment of 300 bicycles to be delivered to Africa. The warehouse was really impressive. There were loads of seriously cute bikes that had been either collected or donated. Some bikes would be the dream cycling machine of a hoxton assymetric haircut artist. Particularly impressive was the Royal Mail, who have many bicycles but who previosuly were unable to donate them due to liability issues - the average working life span of a Royal mail bicycle is 7 years and they make ideal bikes for africa as they have rear racks and a huge steel front basket - we saw one picture of a father carrying a load of firewood on the rear rack, and his ten year old boy on the front!

Setting off from Colchester proper, we motored to Harwich, expecting to be just in time for the ferry, only to discover that all our long hours of training had really paid off - we got there with nearly 2 hours to spare! We passed the time watching model boat races (something that particularly interested Ben and Lucy, as they were sailors themselves), eating fish and chips and drinking beer. It seems that the old men racing their model yachts need to wear their sailing kit whilst on dry land as well as at sea. Who knew?

Once on the ferry it was clear that it was packed to the deckheads with other people going to Copenhagen, and mostly for the same reason as us. Particularly deserving of a mention were Mark, Sophie and their 5 month old baby Samson, who donated £50 on Mark’s Iphone whilst waiting in the queue to board the ferry! Other fellow travellers included another Mark from the RSPB whose friend had left his passport at home, Nancy and Jonathon from the Campaign against Climate Change, Chris the Systems Engineer from the Open University, John from the Bike Bloc, and Tamsin, Ben and one other whose name we didn’t get who were going to Copenhagen for ‘Shits and Giggles.’

Dougal met the Captain in the Cafe, and wrangled us a trip at the bridge the next day. After listening to an aged Scottish sailor play to a small, but appreciative crowd in the bar we retired to our cabin. The ship rocked gently across a fairly calm North Sea and we all drifted off to a good nights sleep.

Day 1 of our cycling tour kicked off in London Inn Fields where we met up with the “stop climate chaos coalition” for the cycle tour through London. On route we met up with a lovely group who had cycled from Bradford to London to join the demonstration. They were at the end of their trip and we were just beginning.

After a few rallying speeches we set off with a friendly police convoy through the streets of London passing the BP headquarters, EON and the Canadian embassy. We were very impressed by the police; mostly on bicycles themselves, friendly and very slick; temporarily blocking off junctions ahead of us and behind us. 

Maryla Hart from Biofuel watch gave a speech about food versus fuel, a topic close to Lucy’s heart in particular. The current biofuels proposed in reality offer very little in carbon saving or overall greenhouse gas savings. In some areas rainforest is being cleared to make way for biofuel plantations which releases carbon, and in others peatlands are being drained. To make matters worse, many biofuels require fertilisers and pesticides for cultivation - so when a “whole lifecycle” approach is taken, biofuels may offer little in the way of reducing carbon emissions. Lucy says ” a personal experience of this area of research is from studying nitrous oxide emissions from oilseed rape, the crop used to make biodiesel. As nitrous oxide is one of the most potent greenhouse gases with a long residence time in the atmosphere, these emissions play a significant part in the cost/benefit analysis. In some cases the production of oilseed rape biodiesel uses more fossil fuels than you save overall. A nonsense!”

Next stop was hyde park and speaker corner where my brother for waiting along with a mob of peaceful activists. Both Simon Hughes and Caroline Lucas gave excellent speeches on the need for action, as well as stirring words from Ellie Hopkins of the UK Youth Climate Coalition. Caroline Lucas was kind enough to give us a ringing endorsement of our mission, as well as providing a nice bit of footage for The Stupid Show (www.ageofstupid.net/stupid-show).

We nearly managed to track down Peter Mandelson and Ed Miliband as well, although they had left by the time we found the Labour Party group. All in all though, the march was amazing; The Independentreckoned there were 40,000 people there! Ben says “It seems like way more than the previous two years that I have come to this march.” 

After the march we headed back to soho to meet up with Lorraine who had been playing samba at a world record attempt of tree planting. After some yummy vegan nosh from Vita organic we set off. After literally 30 seconds we encountered our first mishap. The complete collapse of Dougal’s panniers. 

We left for Colchester once we had repaired the panniers, and stayed in a lovely Bed and Breakfast in the Dutch quarter of the city. Lucy had twisted her knee earlier, in an accident which nearly caused a human dominoes catastrophe. Cue an evening of hot bath and frozen pea compresses. 

Over and out. xxx