Mere Møn biltur

Having shaken off any remaining bird lice from Nyord, it’s onwards to days two and three of our Møn road trip.

We headed east for a day of hiking around the cliffs and forests of Møns Klint. Our first aim was to scale Timmesøbjerg to see the oldest beech trees in Denmark. This hill was apparently used as a place of refuge for tribes in the Iron Age (400-800 AD). We nearly had to test its utility as a refuge, as we found that it was not so hard to get up the hill, but near impossible to find the path down. We eventually made it down, but it was a messy scramble.

Halfway through our bush bashing, Anna reassured herself by saying ‘well, at least there won’t be any snakes!’, only to find an info board at the top of the next hill titled ‘Danske slanger’… I almost didn’t have the heart to translate it for her. On the plus side, only the European adder is poisonous and I’ve read that the harsh Danish climate means they are relatively stunted and small compared to adders elsewhere. I can’t wait to use the phrase ‘it’s cold enough to stunt an adder in here!’ next winter.

Having emerged from the forest, we climbed the thousand steps down to the beach

Anna is a geologist, so she lost her tiny mind over the various rock formations. Having been there before I just wandered around basking in the glow of being such a great older sister taking my beloved sibling to such a relevant attraction.

HAHAHA the ultimate prank. Such a sweet, naive child.

Dutifully making sure we saw all that Møn had to offer, we headed to Liselund Slot before venturing to the south of the island to try a new primitive shelter.

Good news – the experimental shelter was excellent. The Nyord shelters have a serious competitor for my affections in the Fanefjord Slotshaven shelters. They are in the Fanefjord forest (Fanefjord Skov) right at the edge of the sea. There is a little bit of a walk to the site though the forest from where you park your car, but it’s a small price to pay for the ocean views (try and pack smartly or resign yourself to a few trips back and forward lugging awkward IKEA bags full of camping gear).

We were sharing the place with a Danish sea captain-in-training and his lovely Filipino boyfriend, who entertainingly told us all kinds of interesting personal secrets whenever the sea captain went to get firewood.

Steve cooked us up a masterful camping feast of fire-roasted veggies, and then we sat around the campfire learning about how Denmark and Norway are pals because they both think Sweden is the worst.

There were two slightly unnerving features of this campsite though – the first was that it was overrun with disgusting ginormous orange and black slugs, and the second was that it looked like someone had been digging a forest grave. Who is it for? (please not us).

Thankfully a liberal amount of insect repellent seemed to protect us from being marauded in the night by slugs (a nightmare that I have legitimately had, now come to life), despite Anna getting up in the night and breaching the slug barrier. Before you get all concerned about slug welfare, these are a terrible invasive species taking over the place so a few less slugs is a good thing.

We were pretty sad to leave our seaside camp (slugs and all), but we had megalithic højs to see and Ketchup pringles to eat on the road back to civilisation. Of course, we also had to pay a visit to all the mad churches in this area with their demented frescos – no leaving Møn without gaining an appreciation of the Elmelund Master.

It was actually pretty nice weather for the few days we were in Møn, and what better way to wash off three days of sweaty camping grime than a visit to the Snegle! Look at their smiling faces, they loved splashing around in the icy cold waters of the Øresund – don’t let their screams and blue-tinged shivering give you any other impression…