Monday 8th June
Today we finish off the guest bedroom. Greg says it needs a third coat of paint on the walls and a second on the ceiling but instead of doing that we take off the masking tape we used, clean the skirting board, windows and door and then get the room ready for guests on Wednesday night.
There’s a large group coming Wednesday night – they are environmental people from all the communes of Hjorring and they are meeting about the future of nature and the best way to utilise it for the betterment of the area, things like community projects or natural tourism attractions. They will arrive around 3pm Wednesday and will have a meeting / presentation and then dinner. Fourteen will stay the night so that’s every guest room occupied. On Thursday after breakfast there will be another meeting and then lunch with guests of about 23. Because every guest room is occupied we need to move out of the room we’re in at the moment so we can get it ready for guests. We temporarily move into another guest room but we will move into the dungeon for Wednesday with Alejandro.
We lay the carpet and then search for some beds – well actually there are plenty of beds but either the slats don’t fit or none of the mattresses fit. Finally we find some beds and make more slats from planks on the wood pile.
Then we take mattresses from the bunk beds in room 7 and make up the beds. Once that’s done we help Ali weed in the garden and then plant some dahlias, clematis, and other shrubs.

Once we’re done for the day we go and get changed and get the train to Frederikshavn. We have a look around the shops looking for hairdressers because I’d like to get a haircut before Iceland but everything shuts at half 5 so I was hoping for late opening one evening so I could get it done.
After looking around the shops we stop at a pub called Peder Wessel, it’s small and very “local!” There are some patrons tasting the local beer and Daz soon gets chatting to John, a ship’s engineer who’s pretty much sailed the world a couple of times over. He works 6 weeks on and 6 weeks off. John and his mate play a game with scratch cards where all numbers of a dice are available but if you pick the 6 you have to buy a round. They’re drinking beer with chasers – one is a salted liquorice liquor which we try. We end up playing the game and buying quite a few rounds. Finally we manage to tear ourselves away and go in search of food before returning to Tolne.
Tuesday 9th June
Today is another glorious day but disaster has struck again – we took our Kindles with us last night and something must have fallen on Daz’s Kindle and it’s broken. So we need another Kindle. So that’s 2 broken Kindles and a broken notepad in 5 months. We take advantage of the good weather by working on the woodpile in the sun. By the end of the day we have 4 stacks of wood ready for the kiln.
Wednesday 10th June
Today we have another day off so we get the train to Skagen which is a big tourist attraction. It’s the most northern point of Denmark and from there everyone visits Grenen where the North Sea meets the Baltic. We have a look round Skagen then hire bikes and cycle to Grenen and then walk along the beach to the point the 2 seas meet.
It’s a beautiful day and the walk along the beach is lovely. I’ve got my amazing shades on (which incidentally cost a fortune) but it’s like having x-ray vision and I can see so clearly into the sea, which is fantastic when there are loads of jelly fish to spot.
Apparently it’s POLARISATION that does it – ain’t technology brill!!
After our walk to the End Of Denmark we cycle back to town and find a lovely restaurant for lunch looking out over the Marina. 
When we get back dinner is just finishing for the 13 guests so we help clear away and tidy up. We’re sleeping in the dungeon tonight so that should be an experience!
Thursday 11th June
Today we’re all up early to help with the guests. The night in the dungeon was indeed interesting. Daz’s bed made so much noise every time he turned over that I couldn’t sleep.
Once the guests are done with breakfast we prepare a room for them so they can hold their meeting and we all work together to prepare lunch for them. This is a collection of open sandwiches – a Danish dish apparently. Smørrebrød (Danish pronunciation: [ˈsmɶɐ̯ɐˌb̥ʁœðˀ] ha ha good luck with that!!! I nearly choked… originally smør og brød, “butter and bread”) usually consists of a piece of buttered rye bread (rugbrød), a dense, dark brown bread. Pålæg (literally “on-lay”), the topping, then among others can refer to commercial or homemade cold cuts, pieces of meat or fish, cheese or spreads. This daily practice is the base on which the art of the famous Danish open sandwich, smørrebrød is created: A slice or two of pålæg is placed on the buttered bread, and then pyntet (decorated) with the right accompaniments, to create a tasty and visually appealing food item. It takes 5 of us working from 10am to 12 (10 man hours) to make approximately 180 smørrebrød, 30 of each of the following: fried fish, potato mayo and chive, pork and crackling with orange, cheese and hot sauce, Danish potato and meat salami and finally egg prawn and mayo with caviar. Each on different breads, all buttered and with garnish, but they look good when we finish.
We then serve this up and it is a little disappointing after all our hard work that only about half are eaten… Maybe Greg’s quantities were out!!! But then his appetite is bigger than most others we have seen!! But the guests have a great meeting and food was appreciated, now for the clean up!!!! After all our hard work we’re allowed to finish at 2pm but we all end up going for a nap. In the early evening we take Lucy for a walk to another stone circle because it’s the site of a geocache.
Lucy has a great time chasing rabbits and deer or perhaps just the scent of them but she must be covering at least 5 times the distance we do and at least 10 times our pace. She’s like a steeplechaser where nothing is big enough to slow her down. We spend 45 minutes searching for the cache and fortunately manage to avoid disaster by spotting all the club cyclists out before Lucy does – we’re really not sure if she’d give chase! Back at the ranch Greg has taken Kieron and Hamilton out to the cinema to see Jurassic World so we have a relaxing evening with Janne, Iben and Masterchef.
Daz has also managed to get us flights with Wow Airlines to Iceland – the only wow element of this airway is ‘Wow what a fxxking shit website’ – it’s taken hours trying to book a seat only to have each booking rejected and phoning results in sitting in a queue for ages. Nightmare but it’s finally done!
Friday 12th June
Today we wake to a quiet house and soon spot Janne’s message that they’ve gone out. We get on with walking Lucy, cleaning the kitchen, stripping all the beds and remaking them, hoovering, dusting and putting all the furniture back that we moved for yesterday’s meeting.
We’ve just started on the woodpile when Greg returns and of course everything is wrong. The wood we’ve just cut is the wrong length even though this is what Greg showed Daz the other day and the woodpiles which were OK Tuesday afternoon are today in the wrong place. It’s an interesting problem – in Sweden we were given a task and often worked on it for days even weeks with no intervention and often no comment. Here the task requirement seems to change by the day!! In the evening we go to the pub next door (it only opens at the weekend) and we sit in the sun whilst Ali plays his guitar and chat to Tonny, Frederick, Trina and Pieter, and others. We have a lovely time and then return home for pizza night and Greg’s pizzas are absolutely fantastic!!
Saturday 13th June
Another day off and we’re off to Lønstrup, a beautiful ancient fishing village. First we get a train to Hjørring and look at some sights. There’s Nørregarde the oldest Street in Hjørring and streets with some fabulous sculptures.
From Hjørring we get the bus to Lønstrup and once we’ve walked around the village which has retained its old world charm, we take a walk south along the beach path to see Rubjerg Knude Fyr – a migrating dune that has almost buried Rubjerg Lighthouse and ancillary buildings within a period of just 10 years. This dramatic fate could not have been predicted when the lighthouse was built in 1900 on the highest point, approximately 60 metres above sea level.
On the way to the lighthouse there’s Mårup church ruin, which is perched precariously on the cliff edge and likely to fall into the sea in years to come. When the church was built in the 13th century, there was about 2 kilometres to the coast. Since that time erosion has eaten away at the cliff, and now there’s just 6m between the church and its doom. The outer part of the cemetery has already disappeared and part of the church has been taken down. It is said that the graveyard contains a mass grave with 226 sailors that were lost when the English frigate “The Crescent” went down off the coast in 1808.
Having enjoyed the sites and witnessed the precarious cliff edge, we return to the village on ‘city bikes’ – they’re like Tesco trolleys – you insert the coin and release the bike and get the coin back when you return the bike to a recognised bike park.
I think Daz would’ve felt safer in a Tesco’s trolley than he did on his bike. Back in the village we catch the bus and train, returning home to Tolne for a quiet night in with Masterchef.
Sunday 14th June
Alejandro has a day off today so Daz and I get on with clearing kitchen and dining room. Then Greg wants to clear the area at the side of the house and Janne and I go off for a tip run. Once that’s done it’s back to the wood pile and a laundry frenzy to wash the mountain of laundry left after all the guests we had Thursday night.
 
