Thirty-three years ago, I embarked on a trip from England to Sweden by car.
In between, I traveled through Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, deciding on how long I would stay in each country by the amount of the local currency remained in my pocket.
Those were the days before the Euro, so I was spending pound sterling, Belgian francs, Dutch guilder, German deutschmarks, Danish krone and Swedish krona. Three of those countries still use those currencies — the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden.
Three ferry trips punctuated the 1,250-mile journey. The first was from Harwich, England, to Zeebrugge, Belgium (I did not realize it at the time, but it was one of the route’s last crossings); the second was from Puttgarden, Germany, to Rødbyhaven, Denmark; and the last was from Helsingør, Denmark, home of Hamlet, to Helsingborg, Sweden.
The Puttgarden to Rødbyhaven ferry is in the news this week as it is to be replaced by a tunnel in 2029.
Tourists — as I was inevitably then and very often am still — look at these things differently from locals and businesses, which might champion quicker driving times, faster links and an increased pool of visitors.
People always pause when it comes to connections. A connecting flight is given a sigh, and a ferry stop is often seen as an insurmountable barrier.
Crossing from one side of London, the largest city in Europe, to the other was always a colossal pain involving one or several connections, a problem that has been eliminated by improvements to inner-city London stations so that they were transformed from terminuses into stops, and the Elizabeth Line that now connects Essex and Kent parts of London to Heathrow and the West End.
The romantic and traveler in me, though, mourns these lost connections, the sinuous, occasionally tortuous network of veins linking geography and history.
The tunnel is going to go along — well, under — the exact path the ferry took, so the ferry has to go.
Most of the cost has been funded by Denmark itself, so the state obviously felt it was important to build it, and there are arguments that carbon footprints will be reduced. There will also be two train lines constructed.
A 10-minute drive is to replace the 45-minute ferry trip.
My country, England, also has seen a new tunnel open this month, the Silvertown Tunnel in Central London, which goes from North Greenwich, or as I called it when young Bugsby’s Marshes, to pretty much where the Excel conference center is.
It is the first road-vehicle tunnel to be built in the capital since 1967, when the eastern tunnel of the Blackwall Tunnel (if one is driving on the right of the road approaching the Blackwall Tunnel the driver will find him or herself unexpectedly going under the Silvertown) joined the original Blackwall tunnel opened in 1897.
The Blackwall has always been free to use, but the Silvertown, a private-public partnership with private equity funding development, and Transport for London repaying it via car tolls, is decidedly not.
For those investors to be repaid, then the Blackwall Tunnel had to start charging. Yes, there are more arguments: There will be better air quality, less traffic and better upkeep. There are also free shuttles for cyclists and discounts for others.
Discount and regular-user schemes have seen poor take-up rates, according to the BBC.
Those who have leisure time will wax lyrical about slow travel.
I do, although I acknowledge some locals’ championing of such infrastructure developments.
Once I was driving through The Netherlands when I came to the Nieuwe Merwede river at a spot called Kop van ‘t Land.
I started to reverse when I realized I could hop my car on a ferry that took all of two minutes to cross and was essentially a slab of wood with a raised level for passengers to stand on.
It was idyllic, two minutes in which time stopped.
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