Author: Anne Fox

Yesterday we went pony trekking. It was on the wish list for the summer holidays and now that the weather has cooled down somewhat it was very pleasant being walked through the woods. However my knees and nether regions need a couple of days to recover after an hour and a half. Mia and Gwen spotted a baby red squirrel during the trek and we missed a grass snake by all accounts.

Afterwards we went into Ebeltoft to do some shopping where we found this great new ice-cream brand. It got us wondering whether they would sell in the UK.

We rounded off the day by eating out at an Italian restaurant which has always been closed when we planned to eat there but for once it was open and very busy but we got our pizza and lasagne.

Anglo Saxon words are much in evidence here in Denmark and have been ever since we arrived but this is a clothes shop chain and therefore very difficult to avoid. This picture was taken in Kolind, a stone’s throw away from us and I know there is at least one more branch in Aarhus. I have doctored it to protect young souls.

Danish TV is showing a  Gordon Ramsey series (I presume there are several) which the girls desperately wanted to see and which made me wonder whether it was shown after the 9pm watershed in the UK or is f-ing and blinding OK at any time of the day now?

By the way, the web domain .nu is very popular in Scandinavia because it means now. Since it belongs to Niue Island in Polynesia there are many possibilities for buying a web address with that domain name ending. (Just noticed that you can’t really see the web address of the shop in the picture anymore as I have reduced the quality so much!)

Tony has just phoned via the wonders of satellite technology no doubt, from ‘the field’. After many delays, 3 days in Longyrbyen, Svalbard and 3 days in Station Nord, NE Greenland plus an abortive attempt by helicopter in the middle of the night last night, the group of 4 are finally in the field.

There is much more snow this year than there usually is and this is making conditions treacherous as well as probably being the reason why there are no geese in the area. Since the main objective of the trip is to ring the geese this poses somewhat of a problem. Since arrival this morning they have set up camp and also gone on a reccie. It is the latter which has shown them that there is a distinct lack of geese.

So… what now? Well they will remain and wait to see if the weather gets better and the geese arrive. Plus this experience raises questions about their return and how much to schedule it will be since it has taken them 7 days to get out to their target area.

Just a quick photo of the cat who at the moment is fascinated by the emerging flying ants. She sits by the holes in the ground from which they emerge and just doesn’t know what to do.

Tony is stuck in Svalbard waiting for the plane to arrive from Greenland. But the plane is fog-bound at the moment. While he is waiting he may be interested to see our new hair-dos!

Just to show the Greenland valley in close-up. Amazing that there is this snow-free patch in the middle of the snow covered North. It won’t be possible to contact Tony except in the case of a dire emergency. No phones, no mobiles, no internet, just a crackly radio intermittently manned.

The picture shows the exact valley in North East Greenland where Tony is headed for. He left yesterday late afternoon for Copenhagen, overnight then today for Svalbard (this all makes sense when you look at the world on a proper 3D spherical globe) from where he will catch a plane to North East Greenland when  Greenland Air have removed their complaint of unfair competition. Tony and his three colleagues are travelling the last leg on a plane chartered by the Sirius Patrol and the Geological Survey. They will be catching geese (not quite sure which species – Brents of some sort at least) and returning to Denmark on August 1st.

Meanwhile Gwen’s class teacher, who has followed her since first year (which was really her second year), decided to retire early. Nothing at all to do with the bad behaviour of the class, she told us at a parent’s evening, after she had explained that she had run out of ideas of how to improve the boys’ behaviour.  So Gwen is faced with a change of personnel in her last year at Nimtofte school. There was a gushing tribute in this week’s local paper to the teacher from her school colleagues.

In late August Gwen will be going for a week away to Bornholm with her classmates (and a couple of teachers in case you were wondering).

Meanwhile Anne has been reprising her career as Smashy and Nicey in the Absolutely Intercultural podcast since April, the latest of which is loosely based on her recent Lisbon trip and can be found here. This effort lies in the grey zone between work and play.

Gwen and Mia went on their annual trip to the seaside. Gwen had to be persuaded after last year’s disaster when they were washed out of their tents in a thunderstorm. So this year they were promised that they didn’t have to sleep in tents but guess what? The ‘little ones’ were so noisy that Gwen decided she preferred to sleep in the tent after all and the weather held so everything was OK except for the dawn chorus which woke her at 5 am both days. The picture shows Gwen having breakfast in a blatent product placement picture as we collected them at 10.00 am. They then slept most of the rest of the day to make up for the hours they had lost over the last two days.

The parents took the opportunity to go to Aarhus to see ‘Match Point’ by Woody Allen which was interesting on all sorts of levels. Otherwise it might have been the Da Vinci Mystery but the reviews are not brilliant.

You can get aerial photos of any address in Denmark from www.krak.dk (choose luftfoto). This is what comes up when you key in our address. Not bad though a little out of date since many of the trees have disappeared after various storms and other attrition over the last few years.

Yesterday Hazel was one year old. At least June 3rd is the best estimate her mother’s owner can make about date of birth as they didn’t notice immediately. So yesterday Hazel had extra special and extra meals plus a couple of presents. Gwen had made a cat shaped box in which to keep her dry food and Mia bought her a rustling tunnel.

Today was the first summery day of the year with sunshine and no rain for the first time in weeks. Tony mowed the lawn, Gwen has sown some seeds which seem to be sprouting and Anne planted the cucumbers which our neighbour kindly supplies us with every year. So the garden looks the best it is ever going to. As the season wears on nature usually takes over.