Denmark

So I have come back from my holiday in Denmark. It was my first visit and it reinforced all my prejudices. Simply – the Danes do it better than us.

I have said for decades now that if only our land-use planners, traffic engineers, politicians – indeed everyone – went to the Netherlands or Denmark rather than Greece or Turkey then they would experience first hand how pleasant our living spaces could be and real change could happen.

Despite having said this I have never been to Denmark – so I thought I’d better go – walk the talk and all that.

Although I have been to the Netherlands many times, I have never managed to reach Denmark. It seems few others have got there either – going out we saw our last British car shortly after Gent in Belgium and on our return we saw our first British car in Maastricht in the Netherlands. Go to France or Italy and the British cars are everywhere.

You might say that driving to Denmark is nuts for many reasons, not least if you have kids in the back on those longer journeys. However, either we have particularly good (docile, long suffering) children or we have got it cracked. First we plan the route with them so that they know where we are going and how long it will take. Using Google Earth they can view the route for interesting places to stop. In fact it was their wish to go to Legoland that set us off to Denmark in the first place. It gets to the point that we are more likely to ask them “are we there yet” than the other way around. We have also found that a good choice of audio book does wonders. Last year Michael Morpurgo’s Kensuki’s Kingdom got us comfortably to Italy and this year Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone brilliantly read by Stephen Fry did the business.

The first thing I noticed arriving in Denmark, although I had been warned, was that the Danes love their flag – it’s everywhere. Village after village was festooned with flags. Every house seems to have a flag pole.

The second thing was the number of cyclists. People of all ages on sit-up-and-beg bikes pootling about. People tell me that more people cycle in Denmark than here because Denmark is flat – okay Denmark isn’t hilly but nor are most of our urban areas. So that reason doesn’t hold. It’s the weather then – no wrong again – Danes cycle in the snow at -10°C. I think the reason is because Denmark is more socially equal than Britain so you do not have to wear Lycra to ride a bike. Cycling is regarded as just another mode of transport so it needs to be catered for just like any other. Consequently, the streets in Denmark tend to be designed for cyclists. No surprise that people cycle. It’s the layout and traffic rules that make the difference.

I noticed this starkly when crossing the border from Belgium to France – many cyclists in Belgium but few in France. The weather does not recognise boundaries and the terrain was the same. The only difference was the street layout. In Belgium the cyclist is catered for to a far greater extent than in France.

So that is what we need to do here. As cycling is even more efficient and green than walking, street layout should begin with the cycle, then add walking, then add motorised traffic. Such an aspiration is so far removed from current experience we should begin with the inner parts of our towns and cities – the area within 800m of the town centre.