The season of the soul

It was a positive surprise, when my colleague Barbara told me she wanted to go flying with me. Sometimes people are afraid of flying a small aeroplane: is it going to be very turbulent? is it a hang glider? do you have glass in your doors or are they open? But not Barbara. She happily jumped into our flying adventure:

The weather was a bit unstable, with limited visibility and low ceiling – but only locally, so I proposed a safe solution: local flight. I picked up four manor houses close to Holbæk – so that we had something we could find and have a look at from the air, and we quickly got airborne:

Our first waypoint was Egemarke estate:

The current main building was built in 1880 on the remains of a former one from 1826. The Egemarke’s first owner, who worked as a Supreme Court assessor, was deprived of his titles due to fraud. Today, Egemarke is operated as agriculture and forestry, together with other estates.

We continued to Algestrup that was established in the middle of the 18th century:

During approx. its first 100 years this estate had the same owners as Egemarke. The main building was once burned down, and rebuilt. New buildings were added. Inside the main building, there should be four rooms nicely decorated with flowers and birds by the artist Mads Jensen Tanggaard, who was a decoration painter.

Mads Jensen Tanggaard was born near Kolding, Jutland, in 1836. He worked as a painter, but lost his workshop during the war with Germany in 1864, which he had been called to as a soldier. The war ended in a total defeat to Denmark, but “our” painter survived. He moved to Copenhagen where he worked and studied, and became a decoration painter. It would be interesting to see those rooms – when/if they one day become open for public.

Barbara and I enjoyed our flight together. The weather was calm, unfortunately overcast, but that didn’t spoil the pleasure of being airborne. We adored all those multiple colours of autumn – the season of the soul – where every leaf is a flower…

Davrup manor was our next sightseeing point:

The village of Davrup was known since the Middle Ages, but the manor and its owners – first from the beginning of the 18th century. The place changed many hands, and the current building is from 1861. It was beautifully surrounded by trees.

And somewhere in between Davrup and Aggersvold, our next destination, there was a colourful forest:

We flew around it a couple of times, and took lots of pictures.

Aggersvold had a big manor in classical style surrounded by tombs:

Aggersvold was first mentioned in the Middle Ages; the current main building is from 1835, and protected by law.

Ordrup Næs peninsula, part of the UNESCO geopark Odsherred; nice place to go hiking:

Ordrup Næs was formed during the Ice Age for about 17-18,000 years ago. During the Stone Age, it was an island. Nowadays, Ordrup Næs stretches out to the sea for approx. 4 km. This place has a rich tradition of landscape painting, and you can see many of paintings at the Odsherred’s Art Museum.

It would be wrong to say “the sun was getting down” – we almost didn’t see it because of the clouds. But it was relatively light, and we continued flying during the civil twilight time.

I heard Thomas (a pal from my flying club) on the COIF frequency, and sent him a message that we also were going to land soon. Thomas waited for us, we had a chat and took a drone-selfie:

Thomas was practicing his night VFR skills, and he soon left for Roskilde. We waived goodbye to him:

It was probably the last afternoon this year, when we could reach to have a flight on a weekday. Next weekend we are going over to winter daylight saving time, and the sunset will be one hour earlier.