Yesterday I drove onto the Odde-Aarhus ferry in the pouring rain. Ferries are a treat for me, most of the islands are connected by bridges but since I have been driving up and down Denmark for the last two weeks and it was good to sit down for a couple of hours and stare out of the window.

This is a great country and a good one to tour in. I feel at home with Danish people, I am sure we are all related somehow (I blame the Vikings). They all speak great English, and although I don’t speak it, I can read it reasonably well as it is so like Swedish.

I have been playing mostly folk clubs, a few house concerts, and last night in a training centre for the big 3f trade union in Silkeborg, situated in Denmak’s lake district. They have a nice concert hall with a grand piano. Touring solo is more sociable than you think, I talk to people all the time and have been staying in a lot of private houses.

I have seen a lot of corners of Denmark, last week I was on the island of Täsinge in a village called Landet (funny name as it means ‘The Countryside) staying with the organiser of a show I had done the night before in Svendborg. I started the day with an icy swim in his outdoor pool. I was about to leave when he suggested I call in at the local church yard. The graveyard is the last resting place of the tragic lovers Elvira Madigan and Sixten Sparre and a very beautiful place it is too. They are buried under a huge oak tree. Sixten was an army officer and married, Elvira was a circus performer. They ran away together in a mad hopeless affair. It ended in the woods nearby on 1st July 1889 in a suicide pact when he shot her then himself. I found it strange that they were buried together, and in a churchyard. Their affair so outraged society that it led to this tragic end, and yet they must have touched a very romantic sensibility too. Foolish dreams. Strange how destructive love can be.

Three more shows than I am home for a week before setting off on my Castles and Churches tour of eastern Germany. The album comes out officially on Monday in the UK.