On our 4th day on Fur, we met Poul Erik – the owner of the airfield since 1992:
Poul Erik showed us his machines – tractors, a helicopter he has been building, and his Cessna which of course has a call sign OY-FUR:
Poul Erik was very kind to allow me to refuel from his private reserves:
We had a good chat, then Poul Erik went cutting grass on the runway, and Henrik and I decided to bike to the harbour. On our way, we stopped by places we found interesting, took pictures, and talked about how wonderful it would be to own a runway. A typical old house:
Fur has approx. 800 residents and an area of 22 km2. Fursund Ferry connects Salling and island of Fur. The ferry sails all year around between Fur Harbour and Branden 52 times a day! The trip takes approx. 3-4 minutes and is done by two newer ferries, Sleipner Fur from 1996 (photo below) and Mjølner Fur from 2012. Both ferries can carry 30 cars:
Around 250,000 tourists visit the island yearly, and it is not going to be the last time for me either.
In the harbour, we had lunch at the Fur Færgekro (English: Ferry Inn):
It was supposed to be Mussels Day on the island, but was cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic, so I had mussels to celebrate the day anyway. Henrik had a traditional fish dish called “stjerneskud”.
Fur Færgekro has a long history behind it. In the old days there was a farm the owners of which had an obligation to row people over Fursund and to provide shelter to the travellers, and eventually a real inn was built. In 1908, the municipality took over the ferry and the inn was bought by the island’s pastor and transformed into Fur Guest House. All alcohol was removed from the menu card. The right to serve alcohol again came back in 1971.
After lunch, we had a stroll to the marina – the area was huge, and there were many nice boats:
To make this stroll more enjoyable, we had an ice-cream. I tried one with alcohol in (it tasted good):
We got stamps in our islands-passport which is a folder that looks like a national passport. The content is 38 islands in Denmark that can be reached by a ferry, with 2 pages per island – a short description, a map, and a place to have a stamp in. The stamps are available in the harbours and on the ferries. Henrik, getting his stamp:
One more fish from the fish parade, and it represents the island:
In the evening, Henrik and I went for a hike to Knudshoved and Knudeklinterne which is the north-east part of Fur. We took the longer path, through the forests:
On some hills “help ropes” were laid out:
In many places on the island, we saw a sign “Fur Brewery” pointing to the Fur Brewery. We joked, all roads on Fur were leading to the brewery! And we also saw several of those signs on our evening hike (blue arrow):
We didn’t visit the brewery though. I don’t like beer, but I buy them for my friends as a souvenir from my flying trips. Henrik didn’t care much, so we left this visit for another good day.
Fur’s lighthouse:
Rarely one can find a lighthouse so unpleasantly looking… But as long as it works! And I expected something like a huge fish a la fish parade! The first lighthouse on Fur was built in 1911. It was replaced with this new one in 2007.
The views were getting better and better. On Knudeklitterne, high cliffs that stretch for over 600 metres, we had our sunset dinner.
We could enjoy both the sunset and the views to the cliffs. Food and company, as well.
Close to the place where we had our al fresco dinner, there was a strange rusted construction. It looked like it had an entrance and was welcoming us inside.
We briefly discussed what kind of snap trap it could be, but decided to explore. When we entered the hall, there were two ways to take – one could either go to the right or to the left. We could see that if we went to the right, we would just come out of it. It wasn’t that interesting. So we turned to the left, and were astonished when we came to the end of it. We we standing on a platform with a glass wall at the edge of a hill (red arrow point at the platform):
Beneath, there was one of the most beautiful view on Fur, otherwise hidden so good from a traveller’s eye:
We spent quite some time there, walking around and watching this natural beauty from different angles. Later I learned, that this place is a part of a project “Places in the countryside”. The idea is to enhance the experience of nature by creating simple architectural interventions. The project on Fur was carried out by Realdania.
The forests were really beautiful. On this hike, there were many pine trees that I love so much. Many of them had growing tips:
And they even had flowers on top:
We reached Lille Knudshoved, the westernmost tip of Fur. Sitting on top of it, and having a cup of tea, we talked about the fascinating nature of this island.
We did 22 km that day, and it felt much easier than the 25 km the day before. We were almost not tired at all:
It was one more great day on the island…