Journey 02 · Denmark
Copenhagen by Commute
Five days riding like a local
Published 12 Sept 2025 · Travelled 29 Aug – 3 Sept 2025
- 7 moments
- 6 days
- 9 km
- Summer
- Denmark
- 55.6800° N, 12.5910° E
- Nyhavn
- 09:05
- 14°C, bright, autumn edge
Everyone photographs Nyhavn and everyone is right to. I got there before the terraces filled, when the boats still outnumbered the tourists, and the coloured facades leaned over the water going about their business of being on every postcard in Denmark. Paid my respects, drank one overpriced coffee, moved on happy.
- 55.6940° N, 12.5490° E
- Nørrebrogade
- 08:40
- 12°C, grey, dry
Rush hour here is the best cycling infrastructure demonstration on earth. You do not ride through it, you get absorbed by it — forty bikes deep at the light, cargo bikes with kids and dogs, nobody in lycra, everybody faster than me. I held my line, signalled with the wrong arm once, and was gently corrected by a woman in a suit doing 30.
03 · Rules I learned by breaking them
- 55.6830° N, 12.5690° E
- Torvehallerne
- 12:30
Open sandwiches with the structural engineering of small monuments. I ordered the herring because you should, and the egg and shrimp because the counter man raised an eyebrow that said trust me. Ate both at a window bar watching cyclists carry home flowers, shelving units, other bicycles. This city moves everything at 20 km/h.
the eyebrow was right
- 55.6760° N, 12.5800° E
- Christianshavn
- 15:15
- 13°C, low sun between showers
The old brick gateways swallow the cycle lanes whole, and for two seconds you ride through shadow polished by a century of handlebars. I circled back and stood off the lane — learned my lesson — to catch the next rider coming through. Ordinary commute, hundred-year-old frame around it.
- 55.6660° N, 12.5760° E
- Islands Brygge Havnebadet
- 16:45
- 13°C, sun, 13 in the air, less in the water
Islands Brygge, water clean enough to jump into in the middle of a capital city, and in early September people were still doing it — loudly, in groups, with the specific joy of cold water and an audience. I sat on the edge with my camera and my jacket on. A man in his seventies dripping beside me said, in English, that the water was better in winter. I believed him and declined.
- Inner harbour
- 19:10
- 11°C, clear, cooling fast
- Last frame
Final evening, one slow lap of the inner harbour with no destination, which by then felt like fluent local. A boat drew a line up the channel, the cranes on Refshaleøen went pink, and my three-speed clicked along the boardwalk like it had all the time in the world. 148 km at city pace. The best kind of nowhere.
- 55.6710° N, 12.5900° E
The route
7 stops
Journey completed
Six days, seven stories
- Frames exposed
- 610
- Kilometres, city pace
- 148
- Cyclists at one red light, counted
- 43
- Cinnamon buns
- 6
- Favourite moment
- Rolling over Dronning Louises Bro at 08:40 inside a school of a hundred bikes
- Best food
- Smørrebrød with pickled herring and the courage to admit I preferred the egg one
