Roskilde; Saturday, 27 July, 2024

The previous evening I’d had a check through what else there was to see in the city and realised that there was a full days’ worth of attractions, but not two days, so instead I took advantage of it being a Saturday to go on an exploration of the wider area by the local buses and trains – with most services running at half hourly frequencies during the main part of the day, compared to hourly on a Sunday. So, for my first leg, after walking down to the station and purchasing my 24-hour ticket for East Sjæland, I caught the 600S bus from Roskilde round to the end of the line in Hillerød. The town is most well-known for its very impressive castle on an island in a large lake it’s as picturesque as you can imagine. I had previously visited the castle from Copenhagen about 14 years earlier, so rather than going inside the castle I had a wander around the lake and took in the views of both the town and the castle before heading back to the railway station to catch the train onto the next destination.

At least it should have been a train, but due to engineering works that had been going on for several months – but were due to end on Sunday evening – togbus were replacing the train for the first couple of stops so I took that to a tiny little station in the middle of nowhere where the train was waiting for us to then take us on the hour long journey right up to the north coast and the town of Hundested.

Hundested sits at the mouth of the Isefjord, a large fjord that cuts down into the north of the island of Sjæland. Just a short distance inland from the mouth of the fjord another fjord branches off – this long fjord leads down to Roskilde and helped to turn the town into one of the most important cities in the Viking realm thanks to its defensive position at the end of a easily defendable fjord, but still having swift access out into the Baltic and North Seas.

My reason for visiting Hundested was to take the ferry that runs across the top of the fjord over to the small town of Rørvig on the opposite side. Today it’s a pleasant way of taking in the views of both fjords and the very pleasant surrounding countryside, but until the completion of the Øresund Bridge in 2000 it was one of the quickest ways of getting across Denmark as the roads head over the top of Sjæland to Helingør and the ferries from there to Helsingborg in Sweden. Even today the route is still popular for people in the north of the island if they want to avoid having to drive down to and round Copenhagen to access the bridge to Sweden.

I took the ferry across the Fjord hopping off in Rørvig to have a quick look around the small harbour town before catching the ferry half an hour later back across to Hundested to then pick up the buses for the next leg of the journey. The first part was the bus from Hundested to a bus stop on the outskirts of Frederiksværk, which at one point looked like the whole trip could go wrong at this point as I had just four minutes to make the change and the bus was five minutes late leaving Hundested, but thankfully over the last couple of stops it managed claw back all the lost time and in the end it was an easy connection onto the next bus continuing across the north of the island to the town of Helsinge.

I had about 25 minutes in Helsinge before the next connection, so I had a bit of a wander around, but the town was very quiet for the early evening on a Saturday so, after grabbing some supplies from the Neto supermarket, I headed back to the bus station to catch the bus for the final leg along the norther part of the island to Helsingør. I had about 15 minutes here to take a couple of quick photos of Hamlets castle before heading over to the station to pick up the hourly train from Helsingør back to Roskilde via Copenhagen, taking just under 90 minutes to make the journey, dropping me off back in Roskilde in time to catch the bus back up to the hotel as the sun was setting, after a quick pit-stop in the 7-Eleven to grab a light snack for dinner.