Islands, nature reserves, sunshine – beautiful Denmark from air

It was a bit windy morning, and I placed my upper cowling on the ground closer to the hangar, to prevent it from flying away 🙂 Pre-flight check, pictures of the parts I’ve been monitoring, and I was ready for the take-off.

I had considered flying somewhere further away, like Germany or Sweden, but the wind in the late afternoon wasn’t going to be very favourable in my home airfield, also I didn’t think I was in my top form for landing in crosswind with gusts. Therefore I decided it would be local flying over Zealand, the big island I live on. There is so little flying during winter time (due to weather and short daylight) that any flight feels like a generous gift.

Nyord island on the photo above, with 33 inhabitants – from the air it looked like there were more houses than inhabitants! The island is approx. 5 km2 from which 4 km2 is a salt-medow flooded at winter time. I previously wrote some fun facts about Nyord when we flew there with my friend Anne Mette. Read more here.

The uninhabited island of Lindholm south of Nyord, just 0.07 km2:

The Lindholm island used to be a place where vaccine against foot-and-mouth desease was produced till the facilities were closed down in 2018. That tiny island is otherwise known for the plans that the Danish government had but eventually gave up on – to house there asylum applicants with criminal records who could not otherwise be extradicted.

I did a round over the Møns Klint – a 7 km stretch of white chalk cliffs of up to 120 m high. It is such a beautiful place to explore, on foot, by boat or from air:

There is a geological museum there (yellow arrow points at):

I continued my flight over the town of Stege – a very cozy one:

And eventually reached Hylteholme, which is a protected nature area of Avnø:

There is a nature center, established in the former military air base, with an exhibition about Avnø. One can also visit the old airport tower, and enjoy a beautiful view of the entire area. I’ve read, it is “the best place to view the small lakes in the meadow” – no! the best place is from an aircraft! 🙂

In one of the buildings, there is Avnø højskole – a place for adult education with various courses focused on sustainable development goals.

Herlufsholm Private School north of Nestved:

The school has recently been excessively covered in the media for one or another scandal that involved bullying of children, inclusive some of the Royal Danish family – that chose to leave the Herlufsholm school.

After 2-3 hours of flying, I returned back to my home airfield. Cleaning my OY-9797 is something I really enjoy doing after a flight. When you do it every time and thoroughly – you see small things that otherwise could go unnoticed.

E.g. I saw an insignificant bump on the vertical tail – it could only come because I did hit a tiny bird or something in the air; that thing wasn’t there before the take-off. It was quite turbulent in the air at times, and I didn’t notice anything during the flight. There were also a couple of scratches on the fuselage – from the many smaller branches of trees lying on our runway after a storm we had the night before. When taxiing, I had to zig-zag between them sometimes.

Lately, I was complaining to my pilot-friend Peter from Sweden about the weather in Denmark, and how much I was missing flying. He pointed me out to the fact, how lucky I am to own an aircraft, to be able to just pull is out of my own hangar when I want to, and go flying – Peter is a wise man.