Glyngore (Gleengyouare)

It's odd when you are planning a trip how some places 'sing out' out from the map and demand to be visited. Why choose 'Glyngore' from the score or so places which pop up on the Campercontacts app when you search in the North Jutland area? There was simply something about its location on a promontory by the shores of Limfjord that looked attractive, an informal parking by the harbour with a bike trail leading off into the nearby countryside. It looked promising; happily the reality superceded even our most optimistic expectation.

It was raining heavily when we topped up with gas at Middlefart (really, sniggering is so puerile...), and the showery weather persisted for most of the journey. By evening the clouds lifted and we took a stroll around Glyngore harbour, which did not take long; it's very cosy - but pleasing, a mix of yachts and fishing boats, a stumpy red and white striped lighthouse at the the end of the quay, rust red wooden fisherman's huts overlooked by a larger, tar-black building, formerly a warehouse, but now housing a tempting looking fish restaurant. Our kind of place we agreed.

There was a knock on the van door. "Hello!"

A slightly built older woman was standing by the van; she had a sing song voice and a beaming smile. 

"I am from the harbour, " she explained. ""How would you say me in English? An official maybe? I am forgetting all my English, these days I am forgetting every thing, I am 72, and now I forget all the time, but not like my husband who is 81 and remembers not a thing."

So we were  introduced to Glyngore's fairy godmother whose official job was to collect the 140DK per night fee from Motorhomers using the overnight parking. However she had developed the role well beyond the job description and acted as an impromptu visitor advisor and fixer, in our case providing us with the URL for a Scandinavian weather App - 'YR'; confirmation that the food at the Limfjord Hus restaurant near the lighthouse was as delicious as its website claimed, and yes, booking was necessary. We never did discover the fairy godmother's name, perhaps they don't have them, so I have decided to call her 'Pernille', partly because it's typically Danish, but mainly because it's the sort of name a fairy godmother ought to have.

We had a great time at Glyngore. The sun came out, the light was fabulous, but the breeze was as bracing as you might expect somewhere that shares its latitude with Stonehaven. So it was doing weather rather than sitting about weather.

The railway that used to connect a ferry at Glyngore to the town of Skive has been turned into a cycle track. At this time of year the path is covered in blossoming apple trees. The countryside is not entirely flat, gently undulating, reflecting the effects of former glaciation. The track runs for about 23kms, we covered about half the distance before we turned around.

When we stopped for a breather at Roslev's old station at Gill fell into conversation with a local woman out walking. She mentioned that the ponds we had passed next the the track had been formed from ancient melt water and when the water was clear you could see the rutted  beds, a result of  glacial erosion. Gill chipped in with the technical term - 'striation'. I love learning new stuff, especially about landscapes.

We had booked ourselves a table at the quayside restaurant for 7pm. We don't eat out much but the place looked good. Anyway, I felt my steak and ale pie birthday meal last week had not quite hit the button. That was our excuse. The meal was good, not quite full on new Nordic cuisine, but certainly influenced by it. I had a pork dish, Gill a modern take on a classic - cod with mashed potatoes.

Each had been reinvented to some extent. Both dishes were set on a bed of creamed potatoes that had been 'lifted' by having tiny cubes of caramelised apple mixed in. The meat dish was accompanied by spring onion, crunchy asparagus and a red wine sauce. The pan fried cod came with pickled carrots and rhubarb and a fish sauce reduction. Topping both dishes were fresh green sun flower seed sprouts - a first for us. 

Pork

Cod

Pud

What is interesting about the new Nordic style is that is a conscious response to the triumph of the Mediterranean diet over recent decades. It asserts that you can do something interesting with our Northern European diet based around meat and two veg and butter based sauces - that the tedium of traditional fare can be enriched by using pickling techniques and mixing fruits with vegetables. The style asserts the importance of seasonal produce and making the most of berries and field foraged greens and herbs. As we become ever more conscious of the carbon footprint of produce trucked across Europe or flown from the other side of the world then a re-vitalised version of vernacular cuisine seems timely, especially if it's as delicious as what we have just eaten.

So what started as a pinpoint on a road atlas, merely GPS co-ordinates on a trip planning spreadsheet gifted us two thoroughly satisfying days, which is one of the delights of travel, it is an exercise in optimism - you exist in constant hope that life might be better than you anticipated.