---

Coastal Adventure in Denmark

Martin Paldan / 10.07.2009

�We´re going to get wet right from the start – great!� One of the Danish teams is going through the road book for the Island Explorer 2009 XPD-race. They quickly realize that the first stage is coasteering. Challenging navigation on the rocky coastline of Bornholm in the middle of the night! It´s a wake-up start, on slippery, wet rock and checkpoints the team can only reach by swimming. ´Welcome to Island Explorer´ would be an appropriate title of Stage A. The team wander off with their head torches on, trying to find their gear and sleeping bags. A few hours of sleep before the start at midnight, could be a sound investment.

Minutes before briefing, earlier this evening, a team jokingly demonstrated their ambitions by showing their rear ends in tights, accompanied by the comment “get used to this sight, it´s the only view you´ll get of us!� The atmosphere was friendly, relaxed and humorous. Most of the racers know each other from earlier races, but a few unknown Swedish teams did create a little tension amongst the favorite Danish teams.

Stage A: Castle and Coast
Inside a huge, old ruin of a castle (the famous Hammershus), the teams stand shoulder by shoulder with head torches on, shining in the dark, but starry night. A flare gun is fired and the race is on! After a few seconds of checking the maps, the teams are off in all directions. The first CP is to be found downhill from the ruin, down by the waterline. A narrow, very steep path is eventually found by most teams and hectic activity fills the night as the teams enter the water, and continue to CP2. The “make sure to bring some sort of waterproof map-case for the road book�-advice from the organizers does now make sense!

Still in the darkness of Bornholm, CP11 was later to be found on a rock face only reachable by rappelling down.

Stage B: “Epic Ride�
After a long (42 meters!) vertical ascent on jumars, that made most participants gasp for air, the teams now reach the first TA in the race. The sun appears on the horizon, and even though it is still very early, it is finally morning. A hard night has ended.

At TA1 the racers re-arrange their gear and jump on their bikes. Five hours in the saddle and 26 CP´s scattered around the island lay ahead!

At CP9 a canoe was to be rowed and carried through to CP11.

Stage C: Coasteering
This was another intense ´coastline-trek´, served up with Baltic-Sea spray as the waves hit reefs with CP´s placed on them. The setting of the coasteering-stages in Island Explorer is very unique in a Danish AR. Nowhere else in Denmark can one experience such a spectacular rocky coastline. All participants later agreed that the coasteering-activity is truly adventurous and challenging!

On this stage it became obvious that one team (Skandia) had taken the lead. They were about 45 minutes ahead of number two (AdventureRacers.dk), when they hit TA3.

See All Stories On This Race