A Week With The Vikings

Crikey, how does a week go by so fast?

The Vikings arrived shortly after my last post. There was a rumble of engines, the dog went crazy, and there they were. Poul and Alice arrived on (or is it in?) the BMW sidecar outfit that I had a short ride on last year. Their friends Peer and Ruth came in an outfit consisting of a Honda Pan European 1100 and a racey, spacey chair which looked like something that had fallen off a funky, gloss-black space shuttle. They are big on equality. Both ladies have their own bikes: the BMW in fact belongs to Alice, and Ruth has a Fazer. However, neither felt up to the task of driving on the left (the 'right' side, as it were) and left that to the gents.



They put up their tents on the lawn and we settled into an afternoon's drinking - a pattern which was to be repeated for the rest of the week. They are great people, and we had a fabulous time with them. Their English ranged from adequate to excellent, so there were no communication problems, and it would seem that the Danes laugh at the same things we do, so there was a lot of common ground.




We did a couple of day rides round Pembrokeshire, and I think I managed to show them the best bits and the good roads. We also did a couple of trips out in the car(s), which meant that Anna could participate too. On a couple of evenings, they did the shopping and cooking, and I was reminded how much I like Danish food. I suspect that my cholesterol has gone off the scale, however. We got through prodigious amounts of beer (and, in the later evenings, some stronger stuff too) and coffee. For the last year or two, I have been drinking a lot of tea, with only one or two cups of coffee a day. With the Vikings, it's coffee when they wake up, and then at regular intervals until bedtime. My eyeballs are still twirling in their sockets.

They left on Wednesday, to go to Yorkshire for a few days before returning on the ferry. As a person of Yorkshirely extraction, I can only think that this was a very good idea, but the reason for their visit wasn't the glories of the Dales or the fascinating industrial history of Bradford. No; it turns out that one of the most popular programmes on Danish television is Heartbeat, followed closely by classics such as All Creatures Great And Small and Emmerdale. They were on a pilgrimage. I did try to point them to the excellent Jorvik Museum in York, where they could have met some of their ancestors face-to-face, but I think they were more interested in seeing if they could spot Bill Maynard.

And now all that is left is a couple of pale patches on the lawn. Next time it will be either a return visit to the land of the peat bogs by myself (and Anna, if they will deign to accept a mere car on their site), or an invasion of the Land of Snog ™ by the four travellers and as many hooligan members of their club in Denmark as they can manage.

Should be a hoot. Can't wait.



Wales, Denmark and Yorkshire (a white rose on a blue background).