Two Go To Thy

E and I had the great good fortune to be invited on a biological excursion to Thy (pronounced approximately Tew), Denmark's first national park. It's in the northwest part of the country, right along the coast. The excursion was yesterday.

We left the University on a bus at 7:00, with about 30 other people from the biology department, and drove for 3 hours across the country (imagine crossing a whole country in three hours). It was nice to get out into the surrounding areas and get some context for where we live. We saw a bunch of sheep, which E decided should be called "wool-cows", because she doesn't know the Danish name for sheep, but she does know "wool" and "cow". So, until we know more Danish, sheep will be "Uldkøer".

We arrived at the park, at a pretty cool lighthouse, and embarked on our hike.

Lodbjerg Fyr, inspiring us to make a fyrtur soon

It was grey and damp, as the weather here likes to be. But, we set off boldly on our hike (which was rumored to be somewhere between 12 and 18 km long, or about 7 hours). It started off very nice (if a bit grey and damp), and we went through some beautiful dunes and heath. There were some close relatives of blueberries that were fruiting, and we gave them a try. They tasted kind of like blueberries, but more bitter.

E and the heath

We had the park director, a botanist, an invertebrate zoologist and a vertebrate zoologist in the group, who gave little talks about various things along the way.

Learning

Sadly, it started raining pretty hard after that. We don't have great rain gear yet, so I got pretty soaked. By the time we arrived at the town where we were stopping for lunch (and the bus had met us), E and I were not particularly excited for the the next 4 hours of hiking that we had planned. Fortunately, it turned out that most people also were feeling done with the hike, so we ate lunch on the bus, and then drove to a nearby town to spend the afternoon. A few intrepid souls finished off the hike, and for that, I salute them.

We, however, went to an aquarium (the Aquarium of the North Sea). It was small, but quite nice, and we saw some interesting things.


There was a touch tank, where touching the fish is encouraged, but picking them up by the tail? Not so much.

Do not pick up the fish by their tails

B complies

And, here's an overview of the town of Nørre Vorupør, the host of the aquarium. For you California dune nerds out there (you know who you are!), check out the native Ammophila on the dune.

Ammophila getting its native on

After that, we got back on the bus, picked up the hikers at the end of their trail, had "second lunch", and headed back to Aarhus.

Beefsteakhack, anyone?