#Three

Another sample of photographs from one of the wallets in our corner cupboard of secrets. Mostly the images are from a holiday I took in the summer of 2000 but as usual with our photos there are other pictures from other times. They often got jumbled up over the years.

For example, this picture was taken in the spring of 1989, inside our terraced house in the Crookes district of Sheffield. We moved from that house in the summer of that year. There's my two girls - Shirley and Baby Frances asleep on the sofa:-

Now back to that holiday, taken in the first summer of this new millennium. It was unusual in that it was just me and my then twelve year old daughter Frances. We were going camping in Denmark and southern Sweden. 

First we had to drive down to the port of Harwich in Essex before getting onto the DFDS Seaways car ferry that in eighteen hours would deposit us in Esbjerg, Denmark. Once off the ferry, we drove sixty miles to the town of Silkeborg where we camped for three nights.

Nearby was Himmelbjerget - once thought to be the tallest point in Denmark at only 482 feet but following more accurate surveys in modern times - it is now only ranked fourth. Himmelbjerget means "The Sky Mountain"...

Later we travelled to Odense, Roskilde, Copenhagen and Helsingborg. Here I am at the age of 46 with Kronburg Castle, Helsingborg behind me. This was the castle upon which William Shakespeare based Elsinore in "Hamlet" though of course Shakespeare never visited Denmark himself.

In Copenhagen, we just had to see the statue of The Little Mermaid at the harbourside.  Here's our Frances at twelve with her fishy fairytale friend...

We spent less time in southern Sweden but we did manage to get to this incredible ancient site known as "Ales Stenar". It overlooks the Baltic Sea  and is probably around 1400 years old. The stones were arranged in the shape of a ship. Many competing archaeological theories surround the site...

And here's Frances by a village road sign in southern Sweden. What a mouthful that place name is! Of course it might be saying "Turn left for recycling site" as far as I know. Perhaps Monica The Dawn Treader blogger from Sweden may able to throw some light on this place name.

That trip to Denmark and southern Sweden - almost a quarter of a century ago - remains sweet in my memory because of the places we went and because of the special time I spent with my lovely daughter, bringing us even closer together. The weather was summery and the campsites were great. We cooked on a camping stove and lived simply. We saw The Tollund Man in Silkeborg Museum, visited Legoland  in Billund and Hans Christian Andersen's house in Odense.

Those pictures help to bring it all back.