Europe by Bike – Denmark
Two-thousand six-hundred kilometres of railways link the major towns and cities in Denmark. The major operator is De Danske Statsbaner (DSB) and there are a number of smaller private operators of which the biggest is Arriva. Danish railways are cyclist-friendly, with special spaces for bicycles on trains. Both Denmark and the Netherlands are sensibly investing in their cycle networks and it shows.
Trains
High Speed Trains, ICE
DB/DSB jointly operate international ICEs from Hamburg to Copenhagen via Padborg or Puttgarden throughout the day, but there are the usual restrictions on bicycles: Partially dismantled and bagged seems to be allowed.
DSB IC3 train at Frederikshavn, Denmark
The three EuroCity pairs from Hamburg to Kopenhagen and the X2000 fast train to Stockholm do not take bicycles, except the usual bagged and partially dismantled variation. There are hourly trains from Hamburg to Copenhagen which take bicycles where it is necessary to change in Flensburg and Fredericia
Domestic InterCity and InterCityLyn trains take bicycles outside of the rush hour (06:00-09:00 and 15:00-18:00). Bicycles are not transported free. The cost varies with distance. Reservation of bicycle places is essential. Pre-book at stations or call +45 70131415. You can stand anywhere but your bike can’t!
Avedoere Station
Bicycle transport within Greater Copenhagen is free on the S-Tog (Suburban Rail).
RØ, RV, ØR (Öresund Trains) regional trains, at least in Denmark and InterRegional (IR) trains carry bicycles (see note below). Reservations are not required.
Öresund Trains cross the Öresund bridge and tunnel every 20 minutes. Travelling time between Copenhagen and Malmö (Sweden) is about 35 minutes. These trains run the whole way round Öresund from Helsinger in Denmark via Copenhagen and Malmö to Helsingborg and other cities in Sweden. The Öresund service across ‘The Bridge’ to Malmö has been affected by the influx of refugees, and passengers must now change at Kastrup Airport Station and show ID to travel on to Sweden. The latest information we have is that the trains across the bridge do not take bicycles. If you wish to travel to Sweden from Copenhagen, travel to Helsingor and take the ferry to Helsingbor. There is a frequent service (www.scandlines.com/). It is cheaper to book the ferry in advance.
Getting to Denmark
Until the replacement for the DFDS service from Harwich to Esbjerg arrives, the only surface route by public transport to Copenhagen from London is via Harwich and the daytime Stena Line ferry to Hoek van Holland, and then via Rotterdam, Amersfoot, Osnabrück, Hamburg, Flensberg and Fredericia to Copenhagen.
Tickets
DSB offers first (DSB1) and second (Standard) class tickets which are refundable. There are also non-refundable Orange Tickets. Children travel for about half the adult fare and grey haired over 65 year olds receive a 50% discount on their tickets. Tickets can be bought at stations, online (but see below) from DSB; online from Voyages SNCF; by phone +45 70131415 or in case of difficulty by emailing kundenhenv@dsb.dk.
There are also clip cards that will save you money as long as you use the whole card. These might make sense with a group. One good idea is that you can reserve seats in one of three zones:
• Standard
• Standard Stillezone Compartment/Area where you need to be silent, and mobile phones should either be turned off or in silent mode.
• Standard Familiezone As its name suggests there may be children present in this area and therefore it could be noisy.
The Website
The website is not the ideal place to buy Danish railway tickets, unless you speak Danish with the fluency of Hamlet. It is in Danish, although there is an explanatory page in English: www.dsb.dk/om-dsb/in-english/. These English pages also contain a guide to how to buy a ticket online, but the pages referred to are in Danish.
There are various pop ups that occur from time to time offering you cheaper transfer to first class and similar. The DSB suggests that English-speakers cut and paste the pop up to a translation program. At this point your internet-friendly or even addicted researcher decided life was too short for this type of fun and games. We would suggest you either join a queue at a station or use the French or German railway’s British agents, Voyages SNCF or Deutsche Bahn, if you wish to buy your tickets beforehand.
Putting Bikes on Trains and Buses
Bicycles but not tandems and bike trailers are transported on most DSB services and on private regional trains. DSB trains that do not take bicycles are shown in the timetables with a crossed out bicycle pictogram. You are expected to load your bicycle yourself onto Danish trains. There are bicycle pumps in the existing bicycle compartments on suburban trains in Greater Copenhagen.
Having written this, our experience some years ago on the Copenhagen-Flensburg service was not as we would have wished. The train was 12 carriages or so long, and split up at various points en route, with two or four car sets going off to somewhere else. We made the mistake of travelling from Roskilde, west of Copenhagen. There was no indication where one should stand to find the part of the train with a specific destination, and no members of staff on the platform to tell us. This meant that rather than being able to take our bags off our bicycles and putting the bikes and bags on the train separately, we needed to climb up steep steps with heavily laden bicycles.
When the train arrived, we got into a carriage due for Odense just to get on the train. We were directed at Ringsted station to change to a carriage further forward. When we ran almost the length of the train and got on at the point where a conductor was standing, we discovered that we were now in the train to Esbjerg. At the next station we had to repeat the procedure and finally managed to get to the correct portion of the train.
We now realise that we should have joined the train in Copenhagen where it started and where we would have had time to walk down the train to find our carriage. However one does wish that DSB could invest a bob or two in indicating where carriages are likely to stop. Most continental railways manage this, even British operators who are not high in the customer satisfaction stakes manage to make things a reasonably clear.
Country bus services in Denmark can take two or three bicycles, if there is room and the driver agrees.
Ferries
Denmark is an archipelago, consisting of the Jutland peninsular and a number of islands. Due to the country’s geography, the road system in the Danish archipelago makes frequent use of ferries. Local car ferries link most islands to the road network. All the car ferries and many regional excursion ships take bicycles. There are regular international ferries to and from the Faroe Islands, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the UK. The good news is that even when a car ferry is ‘full’, there is always space for another bike.
Diversions
The most interesting trip we can recommend, unfortunately, without your bicycle, unless it is bagged etc., is the ICE-TD trip from Hamburg or Lübeck to Copenhagen. The train travels via the Vogelfluglinie (Bird Flight Line) and is shunted on to a Puttgarden-Rodby ferry for the 50 minute trip across the Baltic.
