Sailing around South Greenland’s deep blue icebergs isn’t something you get the chance to do every day, but you’ll remember it for the rest of them once you’ve done it

My imagination had already informed my adventure of sailing around vast icebergs in the Qooroq ice field of South Greenland. The original trip had been planned with an authentic wooden fishing vessel as our mode of transport, but this had been cancelled due to bad planning on the part of the excursion company; despite having paid upfront, we were dutifully informed that there weren’t enough people on the trip, so ‘it would’t be going’.

Undaunted and undeterred, we set about making this once in a lifetime experience happen ourselves; there was no way I was travelling all the way to Greenland and not having my fifteen minutes of tranquility among creaking ice and the crisp, breathy stillness of summertime on the world’s largest non-continental island.

Blessed with a tenacious guide called Christine, and an intrepid adventurer mariner called Nils, we set about planning this most amazing of experiences. It was planned over a wily coffee in Nils’ headquarters, an atmospheric shipping shack located on the main Narsarsuaq road, adjacent to the air strip and a little before Hospital Valley. The excitement was building, without doubt enhanced by the lack of other tourists, and the voyage was set for the following morning.

“It will just be a sort of dinghy,” Nils advised, “so we must have at least very little wind.”

Squally showers and a light breeze announced the coming dawn, and we breakfasted on reindeer and seal meats with some trepidation; was the weather good enough, would we make it out to the ice field? Our time in Greenland was rapidly running out, so it was getting to the point of now or never.

We needn’t have worried. Ardent skipper Nils collected us from the hotel on the very strike of 8am, and duly ferried us down to the harbour where we boarded our craft, a bright orange and blue inflatable that was to prove our passport to a land of magic. We were accompanied by Christine and guide-in-training Pilu, a native Greenlander who seemed as excited by the prospect of bobbing around in shattered sheet ice as we were. And so in our posse of four excitable boy scouts, with Akela Nils at the helm, we set off for Qooroq.

As we sped our way round the coast, the purply grey patchwork of cotton wool clouds gave way here and there to a shaft of ethereal, watery sunlight, bathing this harshly unforgiving yet beautiful landscape with an almost heavenly glow. It’s very hard to convey the feeling engendered by such an experience now I’m back on dry land sitting in front of a laptop, but thankfully something deep within my psyche holds onto it; the childlike wonder of butterflies in your tummy, the tingling throughout your whole being and the smile, that magnificent inward smile that imbues your very soul with a serene sense of wellbeing.

Approaching the ice field itself, we noticed that the initially sporadic floes were now coming thicker and faster, giving way occasionally to ever larger icebergs of azure and cobalt, indigo and sapphire – all the deep blues of pure ice, uncontaminated by air and impurities. Their majesty was overwhelming, their might bewildering. As Nils cut the engine allowing us to drift sedately among these behemoths of the sea, it was strangely comforting to feel the stillness of the morning, barely punctuated by creaking ice and its desultory crash into the freezing ocean. As the outboard motor slowly sputtered back into life, our captain nuzzled in yet closer, affording us the sublime opportunity to reach out and touch the ice itself, an activity to which mere mortal words can do no justice whatsoever; this was a oneness with nature which has no equal.

We continued to drift and bob among the ice for a good hour, before finally heading back to Narsarsuaq harbour. The random boats were still there, dotted around the quayside just like before, and the fishermen readied their vessels and tended their nets, just like before. All the daily necessities and details of this south Greenlandic village were continuing just as they had a few hours earlier; it was we who were different. We intrepid three, under the guidance of our master mariner, had communed with Mother Nature in a most spectacular way, and that had facilitated a change in us that would be a part of each one of us for our remaining days.

Copenhagen and Helsingør in a long weekend

If you’re thinking of travelling to Denmark, Copehagen is a pretty good place to start, but it won’t give you a typical flavour of the rest of this great country. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the expansion of the EU, whilst greatly beneficial to new members in so many ways, is slowly but surely diluting the character of those countries belonging to it. The huge cultural differences between east and west are diminishing as we head ever closer to a much more uniform state of Europe.

That said, Copenhagen has many charms and – despite its northern latitude – is host to a plethora of alfresco eating and drinking opportunities. When it gets a bit chilly, they just switch on the patio heaters and hand you a blanket – it all makes us look really nesh in the UK, as we dive under cover as soon as the temperature drops below 70 (other temperature scales are available).

As you wander the sprawling streets of this ancient city, you can soak up its charms fairly easily on foot, but a canal cruise is highly recommended. It’ll set you back about £7, and you’ll pay almost as much for a beer which will be offered on a tray prior to leaving the harbour (there’s neither a bar nor toilet on board), but it’s a great way to spend an hour and a half.

A good time to travel weather wise is July or August, when you’ve got more chance of sunshine. Scandanavian Airlines run a very efficient, reliable service from Manchester on their workhorse MD 87s (don’t listen to the safety grounding rumours – pilots love these planes, and the grounding of American Airlines’ MD 80 fleet seems more political than anything).

There’s no denying that Copenhagen is an expensive city. Eating out will demand a fairly significant budget, but good value can be found in establishments off the main pedestrianised streets. Expect to pay well over a fiver for a beer (usually Carlsberg or Tuborg) and anything up to twenty quid for a bottle of house wine. Most main courses are around the £15 mark, so by the time you’ve added a starter, a sweet and drinks, you’re looking at a bill which you’d expect from some of the more exclusive restaurants in the UK.

Hotels are generally of a good standard. We stayed at the Ibsens Hotel, about a ten minute walk from Strøget (the longest pedestrianised shopping street in the world) and just five minutes from the train station at Nørreport. Note that breakfast is not usually included in your tariff, but offered as an optional extra for about £8 per person per day. We found it great to skip breakfast, not having to get up to a timetable and drag your scraggy carcase down to feed with a lot of other bleary-eyed (or annoying bright-eyed and bushy-tailed) residents. We would then amble out for the day in our own time, and enjoy a smørrebrød (traditional Danish open sandwich – highly recommended) or an authentic Danish pastry (obligatory) – a far cry from the ones we’re used to at home.

If you like to do the ‘unmissable’ sites when you visit a place, you might want to drop in on the twice beheaded ‘Little Mermaid‘, but be aware she really is quite tiny, and not so easily accessible from the main drag. On a nice day you can walk, but if the weather is not so clement, she’s just one train stop away from Nørreport.

A little further afield, but well worth the trip, is Helsingør – home to Kronborg Castle, inspiration for Shakespeare’s Elsinore. It’s a mere 45 minutes on the train, and the cheapest way to get there is with a 24-hour ticket (about £12) – whatever you do, don’t forget to validate the ticket at your first journey; escaping the wrath of the Danish ticket inspectors is highly recommended.

A visit to Tivoli Gardens is also a must – even if you’re not really a theme-park rider. These delightful grounds are home to some twenty-odd rides (only three or four can be classed as anything approaching white knuckle), landscaped gardens and a host of eating and drinking establishments. You can quite easily lose a day here simply absorbing the atmosphere.

And if you can possibly manage it, do squeeze in the Hans Christian Andersen experience. It’s of the ilk of Bowness’s Beatrix Potter Experience in the UK’s Lake District, and offers a charming blend of Andersen’s life story and the bringing to life of his most famous fairy tales. It’s around £7 to get in, and you can complete it satisfactorily within half an hour, but it really is quite magical.