July 20, 2024Kattegattleden - Day 1 The next morning, Jen and I had a great breakfast, and picked up our bikes from onewaybiketours in Klampenborg. This is the same place we picked up the one-way bike for Dennis. I was happy to see my bike arrived safe and sound. This marks the start of my ride with cousin Jen, from Copenhagen to Gothenburg along the Kattegattleden (the Highway 1 bike trail along the coast of Sweden). https://kattegattleden.se/en Right by the bike shop is a Unesco World Heritage site The par force hunting landscape in North Zealand. We biked through the hunting park for a couple hours. It's beautiful forest, with hunting lodges, ponds, horse drawn carriages, and huge groups (50-100) of deer. The 11,230 acre hunting grounds are fenced in, and have big red gates to let people in. There's also a huge amusement park, about the size of the Santa Cruz beach board walk, in the middle of the woods. Turns out this is the oldest amusement park in the world, founded in 1583! https://www.bakken.dk/english/. We biked our way to Helsingør where the ferry takes us to Sweden. The ferry took 20 mins, and we were able to get some quick lunch in the process. Our goal was to reach Ängelholm Sweden. There were plenty of hotel rooms available when I checked in the morning, but by the time I went to book them around 6pm, there was nothing. I wasn't sure how far we'd bike on day one, so I didn't want to book something out of reach. We ended up having to bike back towards the ferry about 5 miles just to find a room free. The Kattegattleden follows the coast of Sweden for 242 miles, and we have 3 days so we'll have to take some short cuts. The route was named “Cycle Route of the Year in Europe” in 2018. We couldn't get anyone Swedish to pronounce it for us, but I think it's Katy-Gat-laden. For this entire trip, I had done virtually zero research. I knew the basic route, but everything we've seen today was a total surprise, and it was a pretty epic start to our trip. Our hotel for the night was Scandic Helsingborg Nord $169/night. We just had dinner in the hotel, and it was really good! This hotel is super kid friendly, with tons of craft tables, games, toys. Breakfast the next morning was pretty epic! |
