It was quite a windy night and it rained but by the morning, it was bright and sunny but very windy, up to 31 knots. We'd wanted to spend some time in Bornholm anyway, so being harbour-bound is no hardship and the plan for the day was to buy 24-hour passes for the buses and to use them to see a bit of the island, specifically Hammershus castle and the northern half of the island.

After a lazy start, we caught the 11:03 bus and an hour later, we alighted at the castle, or the ruins to be more precise . As stated last year, the castle dates from around 1260 and was originally commissioned by the Bishop of Lund and it stayed in Swedish hands until 1658 when a number of Bornholmers took it over and returned it to Denmark (presumably with the rest of the island!) . The castle was abandoned in 1743 and partially dismantled and then it was open season and much of it was taken to build houses nearby. And that’s about it for the history.

The castle and its environs were very atmospheric I must say, it would have been quite a sight in its heyday. What was a sight today and quite impressive, was the sea, seen from the vantage of a 100m cliff and quite safe. I would not like to have been out there today, the wavelength is very short ie there is not much of a gap between them and the frequency is quite high ie they come thick and fast These aren’t huge but as I said, they come at you so frequently that you don’t know what’s hit you so to repeat, I’m pleased we were not out there .

We then caught the bus to a nice little village with a harbour called Allinge which dates from the middle ages but today is a touristy Padstowish sort of town, nice. We wanted to have lunch in one of the two working smokeries but we chose badly, as all they seemed to have on the menu was a buffet for 115 kroner (£13 or so) so not too expensive but we didn’t want a large lunch and we opted for what we thought was smoked fish and some fries, with some smoked prawns as a side dish. The prawns were delicious, they really were but the rest was a major disappointment, it was a thin watery non-smoked bit of flat something in breadcrumbs and the fries were smothered in large salt crystals, which made me gulp my beer, at £3.50 for a small glass! Still, the ice creams we had later as we wandered about the town were very nice and we consigned the lunch into the 'not to be repeated ‘ category. At 15:00 we caught the bus back to Rønne and were on the boat by 16:30. It was really quite wild, poor CW was straining at the lines, which have now been added to be way of reinforcement as more wind ie a pucca gale is forecast. What fun and so, so nice to be in harbour!