Day 15 - Thursday, August 4 - Bornholm, Denmark

August 04, 2022

Another beautiful sunny morning as we sailed into the port of Ronne on the small island of Bornholm which is about 12 by 20 miles.

Outside our ship are a set of large wind turbine generators (the large housing one sees at the top) and what looks like sets of 3 parts for each tower. There are huge cranes to move the parts around. Our guide today said they were likely for installation at sea as due to NIMBY, no more wind turbines were going up on land and the existing ones would probably be removed over time.

This morning we took the shuttle bus into the small town of Ronne adjacent to the ship. We are actually at an industrial dock about a mile from the center. We walked up to a 12th century stone church and then through narrow winding streets lined with brightly colored Tudor-style half-timber homes, some of which had strangely sloping walls - not sure if it was intentional or not. There were tall hollyhocks growing out of the cracks in the paving stones next to the houses - very colorful and beautiful

After getting back to the ship, Carmen did laundry and we had a quick lunch before heading out on our afternoon bus tour of the island which took 2 hours to go around half the island with a half-hour stop to visit the castle. It is a very picturesque drive along the rocky shore and steep granite cliffs. In the late 1800s, it was a place for the wealthy from Copenhagen to come for the summer with their whole household staff. It is still popular with more plebian tourists. The main stop was at the Hammershus fortress which was built by the archbishop in 1250 and is one of the largest medieval fortifications in northern Europe. It is perched high up on a point overlooking the Baltic Sea. It was abandoned in 1743 but starting in the 1800s, the ruins were preserved. In the interim, stones from the fortress were removed for buildings elsewhere.

We passed fields where wheat, barley, corn and flax were being grown. We saw some fields where the flax was being harvested which was interesting for us as we had never seen this before.