EuroVelo 3 partners visit the land of the vikings

The first day of the meeting focused on the progress of the project’s deliverables and the organisation of the project’s Final Conference, taking place in Santiago (Galicia, Spain) in September 2019. Partners also reviewed the new EuroVelo 3 – Pilgrims Route transnational website and app, that are going to be launched during Velo-city 2019 in the end of June.

On the second day, the project’s partners participated in a workshop aiming to identify the activities to include in a Long-Term Management Agreement (LTMA). The purpose of the LTMA is to ensure that the partnership keeps working together in the long-term to position EuroVelo 3 as a successful transnational long-distance cycle route. Partners also discussed the Guidance document for UNESCO sites on implementing cyclist friendly measures and the ‘Changing Gear Workshop’ that was taking place the following day in Jelling, a UNESCO site with unique remains from the Danish Vikings era. You can read more about the workshop in this article.

But this meeting was also an opportunity for the project partners to discover the region of Vejle, in the southeast of the Jutland Peninsula. The town of Vejle is situated at the head of Vejle Fjord, where the Vejle River and Grejs River and their valleys converge. On the harbour of Vejle Fjord, a remarkable building has been built: the Fjordenhus (Fjord House), designed by the Danish-Icelandic architect Olafur Eliasson and his architectural team and finished in 2018. Built directly on the fjord, the Fjordenhus rises out of the water and seems ready to flow away, with its wavelike structure playing with water and light. Project partners visited this piece of art on the first evening.

The second day included the customary study trip by bike that took the partners near the Danish section of EuroVelo 3, called hærvejen or the Ox Road. This is an ancient trackway in Denmark that was used as a trade road, mostly for livestock but also for amber, fur, honey etc. Project partners did a 3-hours bike trip partly visiting this road, in a region that proved to be surprisingly hilly for Denmark, but very scenic and full of nature!

The EuroVelo 3 – Pilgrims Route COSME project, an 18 months long initiative, aims to strengthen transnational cooperation for the development of EuroVelo 3 – Pilgrims Route. The route takes cyclists on a 5,100 km long exploration of some of Europe’s most famous pilgrims’ routes and religious buildings.

COSME is the EU programme for the Competitiveness of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and this project is funded by the European Commission’s Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME).

The ECF is one of the eight project partners from five different countries.

For more information on EuroVelo 3 – Pilgrims Route visit our website.