Aalborg 24th

I was up at about 0630 writing my blog and making porridge, Katharine went for a shower. I wanted to be at the chandler for opening time which I thought might be 0900 but didn’t think to google it. I left at about 0850 on my micro scooter, passing a couple of crocodiles of school children and found, inevitably, that the place opened at 1000. I came back to the boat finished my blog and we pottered a bit before heading off again at about 0945. Stopping at the clubhouse we went to the loo and spoke to two chaps there about the bridge signals - apparently there are no green lights so with 3 steady reds it means go, whilst 2 steady reds means wait for opposing traffic to go before going.

The chandler only had a couple of inappropriate solar panels and ordering one was going to take several days so having browsed for a bit and tried on some jackets from the sale rail we walked   towards the town centre.  Denmark is much cleaner than the UK which is very noticeable. As we were finding the town centre we heard some drums and the sound of marching bands, we made our way towards the sounds and soon were being passed by several bands from various Norwegian school’s music departments. Apparently the Norwegian schools marching bands were on tour and today was Aalborg’s day for it. There were a mixture of dress styles with some in  uniform and a few not,  one only had drummers and some marchers with rifles, one even had some majorottes, there was also, as you’d expect a bit of a mixture of those who really bought into the concept and those a little unsure about being there, sounding a bit military. The bands were mostly school children from the age of about 6 to 20 with some obvious music teachers mixed in amongst them. They were a splendid spectacle and fun to watch, we spent an hour or so watching the various ones marching and then gathering in the square outside the Mayors office. A bride and groom had to fight their way in to the office in the middle of it and re appear man and wife half an hour later to lots of cheers. Once they had all gathered various speeches were made which we didn’t really understand but clapped as appropriate. A Danish lady had started chatting to us and said it was a Norwegian thing the marching bands and also  that there had been various bonfire occasions over mid summers weekend where the souls of dead witches that were burned would all return to Germany, where, apparently, they tended to come from.  There were lots of young people today and yesterday walking around in sailors hats or stylised versions of them and it appears that these were from the Graduation ceremony which, the tail end of which, we had seen the previous evening. She also said that there was a tower in a park which was well worth a visit.

There was a beautiful Church in the square so we visited this next and it was  beautiful, quite different to ours being all painted rather than bare stone and timber as we would expect. The organ was playing and the organ itself was spectacular taking up the whole end of the building opposite the Altar, there was also a much smaller more modern organ near the choir stalls, possibly for quieter services. There was a donation  desk with a qr code for something like mobile pay and I went to try to make a donation but couldn’t get it to work, so I’m not sure if any brownie points have been accrued there from good intentions.

From here we went to a hiking shop and I saw an army green cagoule made from waxed cotton which struck my fancy, talking to the assistant and asking if it was waterproof he said, no, not at all, it’s water resistant but very breathable as long as you remember to wax it regularly. As it appeared entirely unsuitable but I liked it anyway I made the purchase and now have another not very waterproof jacket to add to the growing collection in the boot room and oilskin locker on the boat. I was also tempted but managed to resist a folding bow saw for cutting fire wood.

From here we went to find a loo and found one in a mall which was clean and polysexual but cost 30 pence to access.

From here we set a course for the tower in the park. On the way we passed a school group playing football rounders which looked fun - the bowler threw a football at the batsman who gave it a good boot and everyone ran from base to base, it seemed to be well enjoyed   and  next we found the park had a nice walk up through the old trees, oak, ash, beech and mostly pretty old and gnarly. At the tower having gained the summit of the hill and hoping to not just enjoy the view but have lunch as well we presented ourselves at the hall for payment and were told it was closed today, too windy - it was still windy and gusty so we wandered around the park for a bit more before making our way back to the centre of town for somewhere to eat.

Katharine thought that she felt like a sausage roll kind of thing, having passed the hairdressing area of the town and the funeral director’s area which was mixed in with the monumental sculptors we ended up back in the town centre. Katharine had previously said how un appealing the marketing and  logos were for various eateries and I think she was right. We passed a shop selling food of some sort but couldn’t really tell what sort, however her desire for sausage rolls was not strong so anything really would do and  we went in. It turned out to be a Korean kitchen doing noodly things but sandwiches too in sourdough so we picked ‘bird bird’ and barbecued pork and sat down to wait with trendy drinks - Aloe Vera and Mango and Lemon Kambucha which were fine. Our order was called and Katharine collected it, each had been cut into two so we did swapsies on half of each and had the most delicious sandwiches imagineable they were at least as good as those from Loch Ranza with flavours, moistness and crunchiness all encaptured within them.

Filling too.

From here we wanted to find the old town which the Danish lady had mentioned and we went in the general direction that she had mentioned and found, initially the main town shopping area but then I spotted off it some lovely old streets and we went down into them. Beautiful old low coloured houses. In one street a pretty woman was changing dresses, which was nice. Not sure quite why, she may have been modelling them.

We’d walked quite a way by now and we thought we’d head back to the boat via the waterfront so headed North to the water, turned left past the university halls and found all the marquees and sound system from the graduation ceremony being dismantled. The water front was interesting with various old boats and so on, also one inlet amongst blocks of flats with a Bavaria moored within it, there was a phone number for calling for berthing which was interesting, probably a fun way to visit your daughter for her graduation. The front also seemed available if a little difficult to fender up for,  had one wanted to stop for some time. There’s nothing in the pilot book about it.

Back at the marina I went for a look around the maritime museum which had an old submarine  in it also a surprising amount of gear that I’ve grown up with like HF radio sets, sextants,  Decca Navigators  - the mark 21, so modern version of the Mk 12 that was dominant in the fishing and coastal industry for  a couple of decades, even an early Magnavox Satelite navigator which used the old transit satelite system  and doppler shift for navigation, I remember having this on a Container ship in the seventies and thinking how modern and space age it looked, now it’s a side note in museums. It was the first reliable satnav but only gave a position every few hours (latitude dependant) and worked out an EP from that as it had inputs from the gyro, log and one put in an  estimate for  drift)

There was also little ship simulator which I quite enjoyed driving out of harbour for a bit before some other visitors arrived and I thought I should let them have a turn with.

Back on the boat we played some Bridge with Martin and had Padron peppers and Carbonara for dinner before retiring to bed.