Monday 13th August 2018

Travel again.

You can tell the year is getting on, as when we get up at five, it is only just getting light. Jools makes coffee, and has fed Mulder and Scully, it is quiet without Molly now, even if she had been withdrawn for a few months. But life goes on.

Jools has the day off, so all there is to do is to get me to the station in time to catch the train. I check and recheck all my travel documents, as I don’t want to get to the airport again with the wrong or no passport.

The train arrives, and I get on, grabbing a seat on the left hand side, but I find all at once I am tired, so on the way through Dover, Folkestone and Ashford, I snooze as the train fills up.

Being mid-summer, or peak holiday season, the train isn’t full, but there are a pair of cockney wideboys in suits perched, one beside me, talking about football and wheeler dealings. It sounds all exciting.

I have breakfast at Stratford, before catching the DLR to the airport, where upon exiting the escalator, I am confronted by chaos. There is a queue for security that snakes from the scanners, all the way through the waiting area, down the stairs, through the departure gates, out into the drop off area and down into the car parks.

And before you join that line, you have to wait elsewhere to drop your cases off. I was thinking about giving up to be honest and go home, but I have to work, so go to drop the case off, then walk to the end of the line for security, joining those with earlier flights, already stressing about not being at the gate in time.

But the line moves quickly, and in 15 minutes we are climbing the stairs, through into the security hall, and soon enough though the the lounge. Only I had forgotten I had my travel camera in a pocket in my cargo pants, and the security machine lights up.

Through that, and I see a colleague, Tracey, ion having breakfast, so I join her for coffee and a chat. We are on the same flight, but heading to very different parks to Denmark, as for me, I am to travel across to the east of the country, to one of our blade factories.

We only have twenty minutes to wait before the flight is called, and the dozen or so other passengers are already waiting by the gate.

We board, have the safety brief and the engines start and soon we taxi to the end of the runway, before roaring into the sky, but into low cloud which ruins my plans for views over London.

After breakfast, I close my eyes and sleep as Europe passes below us.

And it is raining in Denmark, which comes as no surprise, but I can see already most of the harvest is gathered here too, and the fields a parched brown colour.

Once landed and my case retrieved, I go to the car hire place and they give me a VW Passat estate, and once I load that, I program the sat nav and find I have 220 km to go, so I engage drive and the car moves off, and following the car’s directions, I make my way through Velje to the motorway, then across via huge bridges to Odense, and south to Lageland.

The country rarely changes much, low rolling countryside, no more than 50m above sea level, but after 90 minutes, the motorway runs out, and the road turns into a regular two lane one, and with a final long straight I end up at a godforsaken ferry terminal surrounded by fields. I could see the recently departed ferry in the distance, meaning I had an hour to wait for the next one.

It began to rain too.

I could see the inbound ferry, a two deck ship with passenger accommodation above, approaching, more cars arrived, but the ferry would be far from full.

Once that had docked, and the vehicles onboard depart, we are allowed on, parking on the deck, then getting out to climb to the lounges above.

I go out onto deck, and just as ai look out, the linkspan is raised and ferry moves off, out into the inland sea of the great belt. Rain fell harder, so I go in to buy some water and an ice cream, as it felt like I was on my holidays.

In 50 minutes we were docking, and in a few minutes we drove off, out onto an identical road to the one the other side, passing over an identical island.

In half an hour I turned off the main road, and after driving down narrow country lanes I came to Bandholm, where the biggest building was the hotel.

Somehow our bookings were for the next night, but they had room so they changed that, and I was shown to a nearby house which was one of the hotel’s, it was very smart, the bathroom all done out in slate tiles, all very modern.

All I had to do was wait for my colleague.

And he was running late.

So I go to explore, and find a railway station, just a halt really, in front of the hotel. It is the end of a 7 and a half mile preserved line, steam hauled. I am excited, but then I see the last train of the day left an hour before. I take shots of the buffer stops, wander to the harbour, snap the boats and return to my room, where I find Tim is going to be later than thought, so I go for dinner alone, dining on burger, fries and beer.

Just before nine, Tim arrives, so I go back to the bar to chat as he eats his dinner. He persuades me to have not just another beer, but a glass of dessert wine too, that would come to repeat on me all night.

But we had both made it, and just a half hour drive in the morning to the factory.

And this is work, apparently.