An Even Odder Business…

I thought there was something wrong with the suspension because every time I went over the paint on the lane markings of the Autobahn, the steering wheel shook like the feedback on a PlayStation racing car wheel. I’d had a similar problem with my Mercedes so I took my hands off the wheel and pressed the brake gently – no vibration but, there was a ‘ding’ in the cockpit and a message flashed up, ‘Do not remove your hands from the wheel’. What!

I discovered that the Ford S-Max which we’d hired for the trip had a feature called ‘lane control’ which, if you happened to stray, nudged the steering wheel so the car remained in the centre of the lane you were in. My first encounter with the system and not knowing about it was slightly unnerving but I worked out that indicating before I changed lanes, cancelled the ‘driver assist’. This also worked on single track roads and on my tour around the Bornholm coast, I decided to experiment and managed to get the car to go round gentle curves without any help from me, the upshot of which was that the car kept telling me that I should stop and have a coffee because I was clearly becoming incapable of steering the car myself. Clever stuff.

I visited Hammershus, a 13th Century castle at the Northern tip of Bornholm and developed a taste for bicycle racks….

… this one in Glamsbjerg and this next….

I spotted on our return trip via Rotenburg in Germany. This new enthusiasm somehow sits quite happily with railway lines. But, besides the art museum on Bornholm, the other great highlight of the trip was a visit to my sister’s friend’s near neighbour. A brickworks sits in the bottom of a shallow valley and in the middle of that, a fairly unassuming building houses a collection of over 100 cars; the Strøjer Collection.

And…

And…

And…

 

There must have been around 20 Ferrari’s – at least half of which had racing history; a half-dozen Lamborghini’s, a similar amount of classic 50’s Mercedes sports cars, Aston Martins, Maserati’s, a Bugatti Veyron, a dozen Rolls’, a huge H6 Hispano Suiza, an even bigger Duesenburg. Billed as a collection of ‘dream cars’, there was a dream-like quality to tripping over this little lot in the middle of nowhere. Oddly enough, when I was in Finland just before Christmas I happened to turn on the TV in my hotel room and caught the last 10 minutes of a programme about what I now know was the Strøjer Collection; I recognised the hugely enthusiastic and welcoming owner who keeps all the cars in running order and uses them regularly.

Even odder still, a wonderful Skoda museum (although closed when I was there) is just down the road.