2026 North to the Nordics and Nordkapp, Tue June 23, 2026

Hamburg, Germany → Øster Assels, Denmark

This is my route for today, take the highway north from Hamburg, through Germany, then head west on more rural roads until well into Denmark, leaving me in a good position to get to my Ferry from Hirtshals Denmark tomorrow at noon (11:00am checkin deadline).

Departing in the morning from Superbude was complicated by me getting parked in. Either I was going to have to find the owner/driver of that car or I would have to figure out how to get the scooter out. I was able to twist the bike around on the center stand, then ride it down a couple of stairs to the sidewalk. Tricky, because of the wall to my right and no footing to my left. Scary, but ultimately no big deal. Then off to find a coffee shop to wake up my brain. I found a nice cafe just a couple of km away in downtown Hamburg, then got on the highway north.

150 km of 130 kph highway (where I drive about 100 for comfort) and I got off just before the border with Denmark.

I got gas and then took a break at a bus stop before winding my way through very flat, but pretty farmland in southern Denmark. Lots of windmills on the German side, and while still some, quite a bit fewer in Denmark.

Noticably different architecture in Denmark. Still some of those really nice thatched roof houses, but not as richly appointed as the ones I saw in Germany.

One thing that stood out immediately is I started to see a flagpole on nearly every house, and they were flying these very skinny Denmark flags. Later I would learn about the pennants of the Nordics and Sweden. I would say participation in southern Denmark is well over 75%.

I stopped in at a thrift store and scored a great jacket and stuff sack to augment my cold weather clothing. I'm now a lot less worried about cold in Norway. I had been comfortable down to maybe 17°C and could tolerate 13°, but I was told to expect temps down to nearly zero. I'll still need to improve my leg insulation and water resistance, but my upper half is good to go.

I also visited a grocery store and found the food had changed again. Lots of pickled fish and potato salad and Wasa crackers. Also, buttermilk with a bewildering set of specifications: non-fat, 0.1%, 0.3%, 0.5%, etc.

Had a nice picnic lunch and then visited a nature park with really nice trails through the forests. At the park, I talked to an old guy walking his dog. He complained about the heat, even though it was a good 20°F cooler than a couple of days ago in France and Belgium. I guess northerners have a different idea of hot and cold.

Then I had a nearly-run-out-of-gas situation where it was something like 60km to the nearest gas and I had about 55km of range remaining. Fortunately, there was a gas station on the near side of the town and I had at least 10km to spare. Full, I continued off Highway 26 onto a coastal road towards Øster Assels. Google's routing between the two was a little dodgy with an OK, but not great, dirt road.

Into the town, I tried to find the house. From the emailed instructions, it told me I could park behind the church, which I did. But then the house was not visible and I had trouble finding it for a few minutes. But then, in 1ft high letters, there it was. Inside, there were combination locks on the various doors and all signage was handwritten Danish without any English. Took me a bit to figure out which room was mine. And on the way, I ended up trying to get into an occupied room. That shook up the woman staying there a little bit. She's a refugee from Ukraine with zero English matching my amount of Ukranian. The house had a washer and dryer, so I washed all my clothes. This was great timing as I had 7 days of clean clothes and was on day 7...

The nearest and only food option was 8km away at the harbor, so I hopped back on the scooter to get dinner. I had fish and chips and a really good salad with salmon and caviar.

Back at the house at 10:30pm and the sun was still struggling to set. I'm not 1200 km north of the latitude of Vancouver Washington and summer solestice was yesterday.

I'm happy with my progress and pretty sure I can get to Hirstals for the noon ferry to Kristiansand Norway tomorrow. Check-in is probably an hour before, so I need to be there by 11:00am. Also, I haven't purchased a ticket yet, so I want to be early. 2h15m and 180km from here to the ferry tomorrow.

Despite taking no rest days, I'm still about 2 days behind my plan. I'm worried enough that I've decided to skip going to Oslo on this trip. I am going to explore the inland areas of southern Norway a bit, but I'm going to save at least a day by saving Oslo for a future trip with Kathi.


Hamburg → Øster Assels

Zwolle → Hamburg (384 km, 6h26m google time, 6h35m moving time, 8h40m elapsed time, Google +56%)

Ride Log