LAND 36 The days are getting noticeably shorter now, and I savour the extra 15 minutes sleep every week – tempered somewhat by the fact that the start point is a little further from my house each time. I started the day refreshed and positive, looking forward to another long day outside.
Klemensker church sits solid, high, and proud in the landscape. The town is also dominated by a huge silo, and both can be seen for miles around. I walked around the graveyard for a while as the sun rose into a cloudless sky, jackdaws and rooks vociferously and vigorously welcoming the day.
From here I followed a lovely volunteer-maintained path that circles the village, walking alongside fields and pastures carpeted with dew-soaked spider webs. I stopped by the side of the picturesque village pond for a while, in the silent company of a few fishermen, dog walkers and joggers.
I carried on, past the old cement works and into the intensively farmed fields surrounding the town. Huge maize fields, not yet harvested, dominated the landscape and there was very little bird life. The day was still and already quite hot. I tried to find traces of the old railway line in the fields, closed since the 50’s, but there were none.
There were fine views south all the way to the west coast and the sea beyond.
I walked on a very quiet road. The landscape was dominated by three huge windmills that waited almost motionless for a breeze. Fortuitously I looked up as an osprey passed overhead. Later, a young cuckoo also, with angry swallows in pursuit.
Continuing downhill and heading due west, I eventually arrived at the forest planted between Rønne and Hasle in the 19th century to stop the drifting sands. The area has a fascinating history of extraction and industry – coal, clay and ceramics, and if felt fitting to visit PL Beton, a company that makes fabricated concrete components. The yard was full of all sorts of interesting shapes and structures, and I sneaked in and explored for a while, before my bottle went and I walked on.
Some rooks in a recently tilled field, beaks gaping in the heat, were a welcome diversion.
The weather was so delicious, and I was so hot, that I couldn’t resist a quick dip in the sea. The beach was almost deserted, the water mirror-like. Somewhat regrettably I walked back into the forest to my day’s destination – the evocatively named ‘Sapphire Lake’, a clay pit dug in the 60s and aborted soon after, now reclaimed by the forest.
Some reeds and their reflections wrote calligraphic messages in an unknown language.
I followed the setting sun as it burned orange on the treetops to be replaced by the inky night.
LAND 36
WEATHER REPORT – Unbroken sun all day. Temperature 16 – 23 degrees. Wind 1 – 3 m/s, from the southwest. Hours of precipitation: 0 hour. Hours of sunshine: 13 hours.
STOPS with the BIVVY – 0
KILOMETRES WALKED – 17.68 km
DAY LASTED – 13h and 28 m
PEOPLE TALKED TO – 0
BIRDS SEEN and HEARD – 46 species (1 new – osprey) = 127 species in total.
LESSONS LEARNED – don’t store mosquito repellent in the same bag together with your food
IN MY HEAD – a lot of the same old – biodiversity, how we use the land, global warming, Armageddon.
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