Saturday, star date May 18. The wind has eased, but we now we have woken up to thick fog.
Out there, our passage east takes us through one of the busiest shipping lanes in Europe. Complete with a roundabout, linking three traffic separation zones, with big ships coming and going through the narrow sound south of Copenhagen, to all the major ports of the Baltic States. We may have radar, but we ain’t going there in that!
We have heard that inside the limestone cliffs is an old Cold War missile and listening station full of tunnels, so it seemed like a fun idea to get out the bikes and go see.
We took the guided tour, in Danish, with sub-titles (well, a translation app) and were shown the underground tunnels, and heard the history of the site. The missile section is above ground, Hawk missiles on trucks, so they can be moved around; in fact the whole base is mobile.
Denmark did not have or want nuclear warheads so the missiles were ‘just’ full of conventional shrapnel. But a few miles down the road in Germany, was a stash of US nuclear warheads, just in case Denmark had to change its mind quickly!
Deep inside the maze of tunnels were monitoring and control stations, and very uncomfortable looking bunks for the men.
Of course by 4pm when we emerged, the fog had lifted and it’s now a beautiful evening.
The locals say the fog will be back in the morning, sigh ….
Well do you know what, at the end of the day we left schedules and deadlines with our P45. Well, mostly!
I’m rather glad to hear that Danish weaponry is not linked in to ‘shock and awe’ from over the pond as such stuff requires a measured, stable, think-before-you-act, build-bridges-not-walls CiC. In my ‘umble opinion of course.