Dawn started clear and bright – only 10 degrees Celsius but completely still, so I didn’t feel cold at all. I walked through a forest of pine and then beech, for a while following my path from last week, hoping I would find my missing binoculars.
I ended up by the side of Pyrite Lake, a large water-filled quarry. The sound of the distant sea was reflected or echoed in the trees to my left, creating a peculiar, unbalanced sensation. A kingfisher streaked by and settled briefly in the reed beds by the lake shore.
Later I wandered around the ruins of the Hasle Klinker factory, once Bornholm’s largest single employer. Long since dismantled, parts of the area are being reclaimed by nature. Piles of aggregates and various building materials are still stored in the remaining paved areas and the cavernous production hall. In the nearby ‘Quartz lake’, giant piles of gravel and sand are hidden within the forest.
This area between Hasle and Rønne is a testament to the ever-changing relationship between man and nature – a story of shifting sand dunes, pine plantations, huge extraction industries and now, recreational pursuits. Mountain bike paths bisect corroded railway lines. A row of Industrial digging equipment lies rusting and forgotten like a display of long-extinct prehistoric creatures.
Eventually I left the coastline and the forest and headed uphill and inland, through the familiar cultivated landscape of rural Bornholm. Looking back I had fantastic views of the town of Halse, the Baltic Sea, and even the distant coastline of Sweden. Above me, raptors and corvids quarrelled and bickered in the clear blue sky.
By late afternoon I reached the start of Svartingedal, a narrow and heavily forested rift valley cut deep into the landscape. I followed the stream down through a tumble of ash, beech and cherry, the valley sometimes widening to a meadow grazed by cattle and goats, sometimes narrowing to a maze of fallen trunks, twisted ivy and bramble.
Balanced precariously at the top of the valley lies ‘Jættabujl’, an erratic boulder apparently thrown all the way from Sweden by a troll – aiming for the nearby Klemensker church.
Emerging from the valley I continued down the road to Brogårdstenen. Bornholm’s largest runestone- I could just about manage a last exhausted sketch before the sun slipped below the horizon and the day was done.
LAND 37
WEATHER REPORT – Mostly sunny all day. Temperature 10 – 20 degrees. Wind 1 – 4 m/s, from the south. Hours of precipitation: 0 hour. Hours of sunshine: 9.5 hours.
STOPS with the BIVVY – 0
KILOMETRES WALKED – 15.86 km
DAY LASTED – 12h and 47 m
PEOPLE TALKED TO – 4
BIRDS SEEN and HEARD – 46 species (2 new – kingfisher, pochard) = 129 species in total.
LESSONS LEARNED – (actually from last week) remember your binoculars when packing up – I left them on the side of Sapphire lake.
IN MY HEAD – The Biogas issue – the political processes involved, and all the energy and effort expended.
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