Tour d’Europe
Sometimes things don’t go as you’ve planned. After a long and slow winter in Umeå, I definitely felt that I needed a bright and uplifting spring somewhere on the road. Maybe it has become a bit of a curse for me, but I seem most at peace when I’m chasing the horizon. After a stop at my sister’s place in south Norway in mid March, I set off just me and Bentley on the ferry across to Denmark. A country I know so well, from having lived here for nearly six years in the early to mid 1990s. My dog trialing, training and hunting had me travelling around there to every nook and cranny.
I had almost forgotten how the Danish countryside smells in spring, with all the farmers spreading fertiliser on their fields. The first morning in the northernmost part Bentley finally got a good run on a beach again. In NZ all my dogs loved running and swimming on the beaches. After the beach I stopped at a bakery for some rolls (“rundstykker”) and some Danish pastry with a coffee. A rural bakery is one of the small, enjoyable things in Denmark. I then drove on to Viborg where I used to live and had a bit of a private sightseeing in my old streets near the cathedral, before meeting up with a couple of good friends from back then, Rickard & Michael. My Danish was a bit rusty but I still managed to make some sense.
From Denmark I continued to Germany, also a country I know fairly well and language wise I’m even more rusty there, however I always seem to pick up on it again. After a couple of days I got to Heidelberg to catch up with a friend there too. This oldest university city in Germany that we learned about in the German books in our school lessons. It’s a very nice city, lots of students of course and I’d like to come back. Further south I spent some time in the Dreiländereck, the triangle of Germany, France and Switzerland. On the Swiss side I was in an area stretching from Basel to Lucerne. The old town in the latter city is both interesting and beautiful. I love their landmark old wooden bridges and a lot of the history and the famous Lion of Lucerne. The Swiss-German language though is barely comprehensive for a German. It’s like Portuguese compared with Spanish, so very different.
A bit about the pictures above, the water retrieves are from a lake in Burgundy, France. It was a nice and warm spring and Bentley spent ages fetching a dummy from different spots around the lake. The first sunset picture is from the crossing from Norway to Denmark, the second of Bentley on the balcony of the hotel at Königstuhl above Heidelberg, where both locals and tourists come up to watch the views of the city. In Switzerland I spent some time at Oberkirch near Sursee, by the lake Sempachersee and the tributary Suhre. It was interesting to learn of the fishery there over the past centuries and of the twenty species, the main commercial one targeted by several generations of two or three families of fishermen, is what they call Felchen. In English the common term would be Whitefish and in Scandinavia a type of “sik” (Coregonus), in Europe with several different types and the Swiss differs from what we have in Scandinavia. As seen in the picture on the left, I always saw Felchen whilst walking along the Suhre with Bentley. Pictured on the right I cooked some and it was excellent eating. Not caught by myself but bought from the Hofer family on the shore of the Sempachersee. Pictured below is the Zwimpfer family on the lake with their nets in 1915. They have fished the Sempachersee since 1501.
A good chunk of my time was spent in France. I’ve lots of good memories from France in the past, but I don’t speak French. That’s a big gap in my linguistic education but somehow one gets by anyway. Bentley got more swimming in lakes and running on beaches. He also got to stalk up on some pheasants on some coastal farmland by La Forêt des Landes, where we also came across some wild pigs. Both in France and Switzerland I had to keep an eye out for ticks that I regularly had to remove from his head and body, bloody nuisance! Pictured above is some of the brilliantly coloured rapeseed which always decorates the French countryside in spring. They are Europe’s leading producer of rapeseed oil. I visited the WWI battlefields by the city of Verdun. One of the worst in history. The old battlefields are craters upon craters, now covered in grass and trees, back then all mud. Entire villages were wiped out. The city itself with major damages. Interesting but sobering.
And then some time in Alsace is well spent, including the beautiful little town of Kaysersberg. This is where the travelling chef and travel presenter Anthony Bourdain took his own life in 2018, which came as a shock for all of us who really enjoyed his work. Here I was joined by my friend from Heidelberg and we had lunch at the Winstub in La Chambard hotel where Bourdain died. An excellent winstub, mentioned in the Michelin guide with a Bib Gourmand, and the hotel restaurant has two Michelin stars. Pictured above my Hereford entrecote in a green pepper sauce and a marinated trout. Accompanied of course by an Alsatian white from the surrounding vineyards.
At one accommodation near Champagnat I made a new interesting acquaintance too. Tomasz is a Polish forester/gamekeeper who now works for a transport company, driving around Europe doing smaller deliveries. We had some long chats and he introduced me to an excellent beer called Kasztelan, brewed in Sierpc some 40 km from where he lives. I have long planned to make a trip around Poland and we’ll stay in touch. He might make it to Scandinavia too.
In northern Spain I got all the way across to Galicia, a district from where I’ve borrowed most of the Spanish dishes that I’ve regularly been cooking. From garbanzo y chorizo to pulpo y gambas al ajillo. I will do a refresher of my Spanish but I feel comfortable there. I wanted to check up a bit on that Galician coastline, for future ventures there for fishing and spearfishing. And more beer of course. Estrella Galicia, for those who don’t know, has nothing to do with the more common Estrella from Barcelona.
The first photo above is actually of a Spanish inspired dinner I made in Switzerland with tuna steaks and a salsa. I’ve made it before and the recipe comes from a Ponsonby restaurant in Auckland called SPQR. Also pictured some pulpo y gamas al ajillo in Galicia and Bentley stretching his legs on a great beach in the same area. The original picture of an English setter is from my accommodation in the Asturias. When I was there, I visited the small town of Guernica (or Gernika in Basque) in the Basque Country, infamous for General Franco suggesting that Nazi Germany could bomb the town to practise their blitz krieg in 1937. To maximise the devastation the attack was done on a market day, one Monday in April. After Pablo Picasso had read an eye witness account of the attack, he did his very famous Guernica painting. In 2014 Hayley and I went past his atelier in Paris where he painted it. When he famously was confronted by Germans during the WWII occupation of Paris, where they asked him “Did you do this?”, he had answered “No, you did.” Later in 2014 we also saw the original painting hanging in Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid. I was also there on a market day, a Monday in April.
Only 35 km from Guernica is the city of Bilbao where my football team Tottenham Hotspur one month later won the Europa League. That’s the third time they’ve lifted that trophy (the inaugural season in 1972, 1984, 2025). After Galicia, Asturias and the Basque Country I went back and spent some more time in France before I had to return north.
Driving east through Denmark over all the bridges, after the Lillebælt but before the Storebælt and Öresund bridges, I made a stop at Funen island. Just south of Odense, near Ringe, I had a walk at the Sdr Højrup cemetery. My late Danish friend Erik Danielsen (pointer kennel Takese) used to live next door. Not very far from him lived the legendary pointer breeder Bent Hansen (Boga). I have a cassette tape from 1996 when Erik and I visited Bent and I conducted an interview with him. The year after I left Denmark. They brought the two German Blackfield Wellington & World Master to be used at stud in Denmark. They were brothers of the famous Championne d’Europe Blackfield Wildcat and I had a dog by World Master that I trained called Agertoften Kazan. I wrote this article about Wildcat and Erik on the Facebook page English Setters & Pointers in Hunting & Trials : Blackfield Wildcat
After Denmark it was nice being back in Sweden for a few days, slowly making my way up the western side from the far south. Before entering Norway (and same rule for Finland) from abroad, a dog must have seen a veterinary to be given a tablet against fox tapeworm. The vet will then have to enter that into the dog’s EU passport. It’s a bit of a pain and seems to be overcaution by the Norwegian government. This was to be Bentley’s fourth time going to Norway which meant as many times to the vet for this. We were miles away from Umeå and had to find a random vet somewhere on the way. One early morning we dropped in to a slightly surprised vet at Brålanda in Vänersborg and were then ready to cross into Norway 24 hours later, which we did further north. In Norway we went via Elverum, up over the Dovre mountains to come across to Romsdal to visit my friend Trond in Måndalen.
I stayed nearly a week with Trond and we had a brilliant time, tramping, sightseeing, watching live football, BBQs and booze. I was actually shown around an impressive brewery in a barn, run by some local lads. Their beer was very good too! The nature in Romsdal is stunning, surrounded by mountains, also iconic ones like the Troll wall (“Trollveggen”), pictured above left.
After this I headed up north to family and celebrated my first National Day in 25 years, on 17/5 with my cousin Øyvind and his family in Harstad. The day after we put his boat out, ready for the summer season and caught some cod while we were at it. I’ve been monitoring a lake that holds Arctic char and as soon as it was ice free I’ve had some great fishing there by myself. My youngest son Finn arrived here one week ago, which was fantastic as I hadn’t seen him for over ten months. He also got a trip out on Øyvind’s boat and caught cod. He studies at the University of Queensland, Australia and will be going back again in another two weeks. Soon, I will be looking at summer and autumn months in Norway and Sweden with Aidan who’s on his way.
