Reading time: approx. 9 min.
Our everyday adventures on Mors took place without Turtle when he broke down the week before and right now stood in my little brother’s workshop in Djursland. It was therefore an X-bus that transported us from Thisted to Nykøbing Mors this Monday evening.
Without Turtle we should of course also find a place to sleep and I had via the Couchsurfing app (an app where people offer that you can sleep on their sofa) found Gry, who lives in Nykøbing and offered that we could stay in her home for a couple of nights. It turned out to be a win-win situation, because we really enjoyed ourselves in each other’s company from the beginning and only few days after our arrival Gry suggested that we could stay there the whole week if we wanted – an offer we quickly and thankfully accepted.
So from not having any place to live, we suddenly lived in a house we mostly had for ourselves during the day when Gry was at work, our own room on the 1st floor, free access to toilet, bath , kitchen, sofa and TV and company of Gry and her two very nice cats, Alfie and Solvej.
Senior sport at Southwest Mors
Tuesday morning we had an agreement to participate in senior sports in the hall at Sydvestmors Friskole (school) in Hvidbjerg.
It may sound strange that at the age of 33 we were invited to senior sports at Mors, but here follows the explanation: The week before when we hitchhiked over thw Island Mors to reach Thy, we were picked up by Else-Marie. When she heard that we came to Mors on our everyday adventures the following week, she immediately contacted two of the local enthusiasts, Egon and Chresten.
Egon is the chairman of senior sports and in the pedel group and Chresten has been involved in many of the activities taking place in and around the school in Hvidbjerg. So now we had an agreement with the two for senior sports in Hvidbjerg on Tuesday morning.
We went to the main road from Nykøbing, put out our thumb and two lifts and approx. half an hour later, we got off at Sydvestmors school.
We went inside the school and found Egon, who immediately began to show us around and tell us about the place. After the morning coffee – and morning song with the children from the school – the warming went on and people spread out on the various activities: bob, table tennis, ‘bedstevolley’, hockey, carpet curling and much more.
Morten and I tried to play a little with the different places, but Egon – and Chresten who we met a little bit – were so eager to show us around and tell us about the place that we never got to participate much in the sport.
When Egon had shown and told us all there was to know about senior sports in Hvidbjerg, Chresten took over and told us about the other projects in the ‘Supervillage’, which they call the area – an association between 7 different villages that have seen the advantage in to work together instead of fighting each other.
Chresten bought smørrebrød in the local grocery store, which we were invited to eat with him and his wife as well as Egon and his wife.
Loan car and fiddle evening
After the delicious lunch, Chresten took us out on a drive on Southwest Mors. First he drove us to Gaardbageriet nearby, where Marianne, who is in the early 30s, has started her own bakery on her parents’ farm, where she herself has grown up. Marianne told us the whole story of how she, after the bakery education and several years in the big city, decided to go home to Mors and start her bakery at the childhood farm. She gave us a few tastings and we continued the trip out on Agerø, while Chresten acted as a local guide and told us everything about the places we passed.
Along the way, he suggested several times that we borrowed his car, because he wouldn’t have to use it for the next couple of days – and as he said “it’s impossible to get around Mors without a car”.
It was a little overwhelming offer, so at first it was difficult to say yes, but Chresten insisted on it, so finally we ended up saying “yes thank you”.
We could also feel that it would make Chresten happy if we accepted his fine offer. So Chresten drove home to himself, stood out of the car and left it to us. It was a strange feeling to drive out of the driveway in a stranger’s car and know that now it was ours for several days.
Mette received expert guidance in crocheting from Lene who sat next to her at the fiddle evening in Karby.
After a couple of hours of rest in a parking lot, where we took a break alone after a day filled with impressions, we started the engine on our new car and headed for Karby.
Here, Morten had said yes to participate in the ‘fiddle evening’, which we had been invited to by Hanne from senior sports. Actually, she inaugurated us that she had mostly said it for fun, because she didn’t think we were interested in it, but Morten had said yes right away and here we were: to the fiddle evening in Karby with 8-10 middle-aged women who all sat with their knitting and crocheting.
I sat next to Lene, who crocheted and asked her if she would help me get started – I tried to crochet a little bit a year ago, but never really got started, so now that we were here, I’d like to take advantage of the opportunity and learn it properly. Lene wanted to help, so with knowledgeable guidance from her, I did well crocheting and was quickly grasped by it.
Flade hills overlooking Mors
After a slow start to the next day, we drove a trip to the city Flade at North Mors, where we had an agreement with Gry’s colleague Charlotte, who is very involved in the local area and has helped to make the former merchant into a common meeting place for the citizens of the city.
On our way out of Nykøbing, we drove past a giraffe, a lion and a tiger with a couple of kids and stopped to look at them. They did not look as dangerous as they stood there, quite quiet, but very lifelike. It was HAMA Pearl’s outdoor exhibition, we were driven past, where they have made various safari animals in pearls. Including the giraffe, which they have used 102,300 pearls to make – twice, because of course there is both a front and a back!
Well, but we were on our way to Flade, so after a short visit to HAMA’s safari park, we drove further north.
When we got to Charlotte, she took us on a walk to see the area. The walk around Flade Hills was a really beautiful experience!
Flade Hills proved – ironically (since the name Flade in Danish means ‘flat’) – to bid on Mors’ highest point, namely the 89 meter high Salgjerhøj, where at the top we got the most amazing panoramic view over a large part of Mors, Limfjorden and over to Thy.
While we walked there and enjoyed the flashy view, Charlotte was able to tell us at the same time how she had experienced moving to a small spot like Flade here at Mors and what happens to local initiatives in the area.
Our walk ended down in the very town of Flade, where Charlotte showed us the town’s gathering place, the Agora, which she has places a big effort to.
It’s really great when we get around the region and in this way are involved in what’s happening in the local area, by some of the local enthusiasts.
Once again we were well stocked with information, so the next thing we did was to drive down to Ejerslev Harbor and enjoy the good view of the moles as we shared a beer.
Grocery Experiences
By noon the next day we drove towards South Mors. We drove down the east coast and came past Højriis Slot and through the surrounding forest before we got out at Centrum (which we laughed a lot over, as the small village Centrum is anything but the center of anything) and continued to Øster Assels .
Here we visited ‘Grocery Dige’, which is a complete tourist attraction in itself – and which I know from my time at the boardingschool at Mors in the year 2000-2002. One might think that it’s just an ordinary grocery store, but when you come inside, you discover that he just has everything between heaven and earth in his shop – and especially very old things that are impossible to imagine, that he will ever get rid of.
Already on the ground floor you see cassette tape players and other treasures from a bygone era, but especially when you come to the 1st floor, the shelves and cases abound of things I’d like to call garbage. Things like work gloves, camel wool shoes, yarn, fishing gear and everything in between. One of the strangest things we found up there was spray paint for pigs. This is an important thing to have in a local grocery store, right?
Although I do laugh about the place, we actually ended up buying a whole bunch of things, namely yarn, crochet hook, a kite, chocolate for Chresten etc.. So he still gets something sold by having so many different things gathered in one place, the dear Dige.
And when we were in the area, it was obviously for us to visit Blidstrup, my old boardingschool.
It’s a nice old manor house, so the arrival of the place is already a bit magical.
We were allowed to take a walk around the school and look and it was fun to revisit the surroundings that have formed the framework for so many good hours in my life and where I have so many good memories and several good friendships from.
Mette got a nice reunion with her former boardingschool Blidstrup.
After this trip down ‘Memory Lane’, we drove to Sillerslev, where we had plans for the evening.
We should make a 30 min. presentation about our lifestyle on 4 wheels in connection with an event at the Culturegrocery in Sillerslev. And what a place! There’s simply a good atmosphere as soon as you walk inside. It’s so nice made with old wooden furniture in various shades, retrolamps with dim light, fireplace and exposed beams. The perfect setting for a pleasant evening.
Backstage Festival
The week we stayed at Grys place, she was quite busy since she was arranging a festival that took place Saturday.
We asked if she could use a few extra hands for the festival – and she could.
So Friday evening we spend with other volunteers in the organization ‘Backstage’, where Gry works and Saturday at lunchtime we went down and participated in the festival with lunch, concerts, selfiestations and much more.
The rest of the weekend – and Monday – we had a few quiet days on the couch with Gry and the cats, where we didn’t do much more than read, watch TV and crochet before we finished our visit to Mors by giving a presentation on the library in Nykøbing on Monday evening.
The bulk of the audience was people we had met on our way during the week at Mors and it was really cool to experience this support from people we had only met so briefly.
Tuesday morning we waved goodbye to Mors out of the windows of our bus that took us east, so we could again be united with Turtle.
See you later Mors!
Tips for upcoming everyday adventures at Mors:
We were given the following tips that we didn’t have time to visit, but which we’ll hopefully come back and visit some other time – or which some of you might want to explore?
- Jesperhus Flower Park.
- The Da Vinci Bridge on the hiking trail “The coastal route around Mors”.
- Mågerodde Nature Reserve.
- Moler Museum.
- Hanklit.
- The small fishing houses at Skibsted Beach.
- The stocking house in Øster Assels.
