18th July 2016 Tunnel Vision.

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Monday 18th Bright start with sunshine, a light breeze and blue skies. Quickly clouded over with a threat of showers in the forecast. I walked around the rural 'block' trying to capture the remarkable range of crops beside the roads and lanes. The single field of Oil seed rape had been cut but still lay drying in stripes beside its bare stalks. I hear they have a blight of bugs this year despite the constant toxic spraying. The rest of the fields were full of grain crops in about half a dozen varieties. None of the fields [or prairies in some cases] has been completely immune to weather damage. Some with extensively flattened patches presumably caused by down-draughts while heavily laden with rain.

This being Denmark there are no crop circles. Perhaps it is because Danish "artists" produce nothing but ugly, infantile daubs and their crop circles would never be recognizable as such.

 I'm calling this daub  "Danish Summer Day!" ©

OMG! This could also mean that all these flattened areas in the crops are actually all made by leading Danish "artists" but their origins have gone completely unnoticed until now.

I'm afraid I belong to the school of thought which believes that real art is something which a first day 'student' at pre-kindergarten could never copy unseen in their disposable nappy. These great "art institutions" are known as "vuggestuer" in Denmark and their "artworks" are internationally known and collected by billionaires. Fortunately the vuggestuer have disposable "canvasses" readily available on demand or the market would swiftly become completely saturated. It seems many Danes need never see their own offspring until they grow up and become revolting.


With Danish schools paying hundreds of thousands for a single class to go on a "school trip" that wouldn't leave enough money for brushes, paints and huge canvasses to mass produce enough pre-school "artworks" to hang in all the council offices. Perhaps Odense zoo has rather more finger painting monkeys than they are really letting on? 

I have been seeing several large birds of prey with long narrow wings and fingertips, locally. They might have been Red Kites but for the lack of obvious markings and colours. No ride today.

Tuesday 19th 60-70F, 16-21C, dead calm with a heavy overcast. The only movement in the trees is from the birds.

This one is called: "Danish piss artists at work." 
Or, alternatively: "GPS crop failure!"

Apparently, four cyclists have put the wind up the railway tunnel authorities between Denmark and Sweden. The cyclists set off to play in the tunnels but were spotted entering. So the trains had to be stopped for safety.

Wouldn't it make far more sense just to leave the trains running? Otherwise "other nutters" will see how incredibly easy it is to bring rail communications between two countries to a complete standstill. And, all without the need for smuggled axes, machetes or knives as is [allegedly] legally required for the one million German "refugee" train passengers before being shot "for their own safety." I hear every train carriage in Europe will now need its own armed and highly trained security guard. Add in the cost of metal detectors at every minor railway station platform right across Europe and their non-contributory social security is going to take a knock. Brixit's Transport Minister  must be laughing his flabby wotsit off this morning!

The Danish transport authorities openly admitted that they hadn't a clue where the cyclists were 'playing.' So there are no security secrets in Denmark? At all? Did the spokesperson use a loud hailer to make this public service announcement? Or did it come over the passenger intercom?

Village racing Coots out training. Their mother does seem unnaturally competitive. This may well be due to toxic run-off or spray drift. 

That'll teach the Danes not to lay a cycle path on all their major bridges! Can you even imagine the cost of taking my camping-trip laden trike on  a cycle ride over the bridge to Sealand via rail in "cycling friendly" Denmark? That would be some cycling 'day trip!' What with trains constantly being cancelled for rail repairs and billions worth of non-runner Italian train sets lying rusting in the sidings. With passengers regularly sent forever onwards by convoys of buses! I wonder whether they allow chickens in cages on board? Do they have a carry-on, weight tariff for weapons or just for laden trikes? Or is this just another "Carry on" rip-off with Danish subtitles?

The reason there are no cycle paths on the bridges is obvious. The vast clouds of dust blowing up from the unswept cycle paths might encourage lunatic drivers to go even faster! With the tendency to prevailing Sou-westerlies, I suppose much of southern Sweden could even be blanketed in dust storms from the shifting dunes on the [missing] bridge-crossing, cycle paths.

Google Earth suggests it is 190-odd km to Copenhagen from here. That's about 120 miles in old money. With a typical following gale I could pedal there in a day if it wasn't for the no-cycling, giant bridge hurdle in my path. So, why is my freedom of movement under the Schengen Treaty being denied to me? Is this all part of the deliberate social inequality being foisted on the Danes by their ever more right wing politicooze?

Had a short, half hour walk under grey skies to un-wrinkle the knots. A Skylark insisted on playing the drama queen as I passed, going both ways. Vaughan Williams would be spinning in his grave! Instead of sitting here writing nonsense I should really be spinning my pedals.

Somewhat unexpectedly, I was actually allowed out on my trike today. The towering hedges will have to wait another day. I decided to head for Ringe to have a look in the big bike shop. Having joined  at Espe, I had the narrow gauge cycle path entirely to myself until well inside the town of Ringe. The roads were wet in places but I missed all the very localized showers. Coming back was into the wind and my collection of storm flies grew apace. By the time I reached home again I was covered from head to toe in them and it felt as if my skin was crawling. Thankfully a shower got rid of them all and the itching. 48 miles under mostly grey skies.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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