We should have been in Cuxhaven that morning, but we had missed the overnight ferry sailing from Harwich. So we had bought tickets on a boat going to Holland, the only other ferry leaving that day. Disembarking late at night at Hoek van Holland, we had found a room for the night at an Ibis hotel just off the highway. Cuxhaven to Rostock would have been a leisurely day driving along the coast, but it’s 530 kilometres from Hoek van Holland to Hamburg and a further 300 kilometres from Hamburg to Rostock, around 8 hours driving in all.

We drove east across the Netherlands, skirting Rotterdam and Utrecht and crossed the German border north of Enschede from where we picked up the autobahn to Bremen and Hamburg. We stopped briefly in Hamburg and then continued on, taking first the Berlin road and then heading north from Wittstock. Although a longer drive, at the time I don’t think there was an autobahn directly between Hamburg and Rostock. It’s often the case that you can travel faster on the restricted autoroutes in France than on the unrestricted autobahns in Germany because traffic is lighter and average speeds higher, but here the traffic quickly thinned out and we could make rapid progress, at least until it became apparent that there were few service stations on this section and we had to nurse the fuel.

We arrived towards late afternoon and after a few wrong turns found our hotel, the Marriott Courtyard. Rostock is in the former German Democratic Republic, and at the time we visited, only 13 years on from re-unification, you could still feel a sense of relative under-development. The principal port for the east, it had lost ground after unification. For our day sightseeing, we had a look round the town (*). A garden festival was in progress on the waterfront and we took a boat ride out to the seaside resort of Warnemünde (*), where we climbed the lighthouse and looked along the wide sandy beach and out to sea. In many languages it is the Baltic Sea but in most neighbouring countries it is the Ostsee.

The following day we took another ferry ride across the sea to Gedser on the southern tip of Zealand in Denmark. We had previously bought some tickets which we were supposed to pick up when we checked in at Harwich, but having missed that boat, we now had to buy new tickets for this crossing. From Gedser we drove north through Zealand to Copenhagen. It is pleasant countryside and we were given a glorious summer afternoon. We stayed at the Glostrup Park Hotel (*) in a suburb west of Copenhagen. The hotel has a very good restaurant called La Cocotte where we had an interesting meal. The waiting staff here were dressed entirely in black and moved around, as if choreographed, providing efficient but distant service at at a purposeful but unhurried pace. They might have been a contemporary theatre company creating a performance out of the craft of waiting at tables.

We had two days in Copenhagen. On our first day we explored the city, taking a boat ride round the harbour. As in many other cities, the docklands have been re-developed and the old wharves and harbour buildings re-modelled or replaced by upmarket apartments. In the afternoon we strolled round the Botanical Gardens and visited the Rosenberg castle (*) and its surrounding parkland. The building was completed in 1624 for Christian IV and was a royal residence through the 17th century. Unlike the baroque palaces built half a century later, Rosenberg is tall and slender rather than low and spreading. In the evening, we visited the Arken Museum (*), a modern art gallery housed in a striking building on the sea front close to our hotel. As is often the case with museum, the building stays in the mind more than the contents. The cafe here was packed so we returned to the hotel for supper. We hadn’t booked, expecting that as hotel guests we didn’t need to. However, it seems that that is not how things work in Denmark. The chef only cooked supper if he knew you were coming. There is little else in Glostrup so we drove into the city centre and found a pizza restaurant.

Our second day in Copenhagen we drove out to the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde (*). The original long ships were built in the 4th century CE and the craft developed through the following centuries. There are a number of long ships in the museum and in the boatyard demonstrations of boatbuilding techniques. At the time, the boatyard was building a replica of the Skuldelev 2 ship, a 30 metre long ship found in Roskilde harbour that was originally constructed in Dublin around 1040. We then drove north up the coast to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (*). It is stunningly located overlooking the narrow Øresund strait that separates Denmark from Sweden (*). The extensive park land houses a sculpture park and in the house there is an art gallery. In the afternoon we drove back to Copenhagen, and visited the Tivoli gardens as the sunset and the lights came on.

The following day we drove over the Øresund Straits Bridge and headed north to Stockholm, a distance of some 660 kilometres. We were taking it easy though and broke the journey half way at Hooks Herrgård (*), just south of Jonkoping. The hotel sits on the edge of a small lake and in the afternoon we borrowed the rowing boat and rowed across from the jetty to the farther side. In the evening we dined in the restaurant overlooking the lake. The following day we completed the rest of the drive to Stockholm, checking into the Radisson Royal Viking Hotel (*) on Vasagatan.

For our first day in Stockholm we took a boat ride out over Lake Mälaren to visit the palace of Drottningholm. Building work started here in 1662 and was completed some twenty years later. The gardens surrounding the palace were completed towards the end of the century. Because it is a royal residence the ceremonial guard is on duty. The layout is typical of 17th century royal residences. We visited the Nyphemberg palace, built at the same time for the kings of Bavaria, when we visited Munich in 2011 and it could have come from the same template. As well as the main house, there is a theatre, the stables and various pavilions in the grounds including the Guard’s Tent, which has the appearance of a tent, and the Chinese pavilion. Back in the city we went for a stroll across the bridges to Gamla Stan, the old town, before supper.

On a second day we visited the open air museum at Skansen (*). The site is extensive and displays many pre-industrial buildings, collected from around Sweden. As well as farmhouses and churches, there are townhouses, workshops and garden plots (*). We watched a demonstration of glass blowing. There is also a zoo at the site. In the afternoon, we visited the Vasa Museum (*), which houses the recovered remains of the warship Vasa. The museum is very impressive and a substantial part of the ship’s structure is preserved. The Vasa was launched in 1628 and sank within a few hundred metres of setting sail as it cleared the harbour. The probable cause was a lack of ballast relative to the height of the ship and the heavy weight of cannon carried. The gun ports on the lower gun deck were open and let in water when the boat keeled over in the wind. The sequence seems very similar to what happened to Henry VIII’s ship Mary Rose while she was manoeuvring in Portsmouth harbour in 1545: a basically unstable design, the sails catching the wind, and the open gun-ports allowing water to flood the interior.

On Tuesday we set off westwards to Grythyttan in Västmanland where we were staying for a couple of nights at the Grythyttans Gästgivaregård (*). This inn is housed in several older buildings on Prästgatan and has a very fine restaurant. Grytthyttan is a very picturesque village. The buildings here are characteristically red-brown timber constructions with slate grey roofs and white framed windows and shutters. After checking in we strolled down to the lake. This is a country of lakes. Just outside the village is the Swedish building from the Seville World Expo held in 1992, the Maltidenshus (*). It was re-assembled here in 1993. The building itself is intended as a representation of the form of a typical Swedish farm barn, in front of which a Mediterranean style porch has been added. In is now used as a centre for culinary arts.

The following day we drove into Hällefors, a larger town nearby. We took a guided tour round the Formens Hus, the design museum, which houses displays of domestic furniture and household artefacts. The museum also has two apartments in a nearby block which have been furnished in the style of the 1950s, creating time capsules of a sort. There are also 3 sculpture parks in Hallefors, all set in the ground of public housing estates: Millesparken (*), Polstjärnan and Mästarnas Park. Earlier, we had driven out to the nearby Kindla Nature Reserve and climbed the hill to the observation post at the top for a fine view over the pine forest (*).

We only stopped here because it is on the way between Stockholm and Göteborg, but Grythyttan and Hällefors turned out to be much more interesting than anticipated. Coming across such places is the upside of this kind of travelling. If there is a downside it is the short amount of time you get in any one place; the feeling that this is just an exploratory trip and you will have to return another time.

The next day we drove on through the lakes and pine forests to Göteborg, skirting Lake Vänern. From here we took a ferry across what is here the Kattegat to Frederikshavn in Denmark and then drove south to Aalborg. Our hotel was the Comwell Hotel (*) at Rebild just south of the town. The following morning we want for a walk in the national park which is just outside the town, then in the afternoon drove into Aalborg itself for a look round. We took a ride to the top of the Aalborgtårnet, a three-legged tower (*). I believe it has been pulled down and rebuilt since we visited. The hotel’s restaurant was closed so we drove over to a neighbouring hotel for supper. At first we thought we were going to have a repeat of our experience in Glostrup and find that the chef wouldn’t cook for unexpected guests. However, although there was some surprise, and some hurried conversation between the front desk and the kitchen, in this case it turned out well and we had a pleasant supper.

Our last day was an unhurried trip across the Jutland peninsula to the North Sea coast to catch our overnight ferry at Esbjerg. We were taking no chances and leaving plenty of time. Just south of Esbjerg is Ribe, the oldest town in Denmark, dating back to the 8th century. We had a look round the town and visited the Domkirke (*) and the Viking Museum (*). By the riverside quay we came across a biker’s club parked up for lunch and were able to admire a fine collection of Harley Davidsons. Then towards the late afternoon we drove the few kilometres up the coast to Esbjerg to catch the overnight ferry home.