The Fly-Run-Fly

Denmark was the second country that I would unfortunately not even have the time to spend a night at. It was actually the first 'fly-run-fly' tha I booked in, but a more short-notice trip to Poland was slotted in in October 2024 for the week I had in between moving jobs. Funnily enough, Ciara and I had actually booked a day trip to Billund but Covid meant that one never materialised. I wanted to try that one just to see if visisting a country for a day was really feasible and if you could actually get anything (e.g. go to the Legoland there and see the history of it all) done. This time, my flight was to Copenhagen instead as I wanted to see that city too and the airport was 'runnable' into the city centre.

The Journey

Another saturday and another stupidly early drive to Stansted airport for a Ryanair morning flight. This time I was on my own as the fly-run-fly requires the ability to run a marathon to come along, so Ciara sat this one out. I usually book official airport parking as prices are ususally pretty similar to third party offsite offerings and the convenience often wins out. This time however, there must have been a large enough price difference when I was booking for me to roll the dice on Maple Parking. It had a bit of a Sunday league away day feel to the imperfectly paved car park and shipping containeresque office but I timed it lucky to just jump on their shuttle bus as I came out of the office and made it to the terminal in good time. I think this was the back end of half term and the airport was a little on the busy side (compared to recent flights, not the hight of summer). I could do the walk from security to the lounge now with my eyes closed, weaving through the sea of occupied chairs surrounded by shops and restaurants. I had to share a table in the lounge with another person as they were at capacity. He wasn't one for talking but making friends probably isn't high on anyone's list at 6am. This didn't matter anyway as less chat meant more carb loading. I powered through some more of the bread rolls and pastries before filling up my water bottles and heading to the gate.

The Run

After an hour or so on the plane, I got off and made my way through Copenhagen airport looking for a toilet to get changed in and the exit. Usually airports are well segmented with arrivals separate from departures, but Copenhagen felt like everything was mixed up into one. It took a long time to get out of the airport but I eventually made it across the main road and railway tracks and hit start on my watch.

The airport is connected to the city centre via ontinuous subburb. This made the first part of the run fairly straight forward. Head in the general direction of the city centre until you see some sort of tall building or landmark to aim for. There was a suprising amount of architectural impressiveness to appreciate on what I was expecting to be a very boring inbound segment of the run. The Sun was also comfortably out in the cloudless sky, something you can't necessarily count on in Scandinavia in February.

Eventually I saw my first church spire and had a bit of a waypoint to remember. I then saw the water for the first time, partialy frozen over with some ducks swimming nearby. There was a path heading round the water that a few people were walking down. I decided to head away from where I though the centre was and follow the path, knowing I can just turn around and come back if I need to.

I crossed a bridge in hope that the path I then joined would bring me indirectly round to the city centre, rather than away from it. This muddy path became weirder and weirder as it went on. The water on the right was unassuming. The houses on the left were anything but. Half shack half genuine dwelling, each one looked completely different to the next. Like individual horders' paradises, whilst still appearing siomewhat well maintained and cared for. Random items, tools, possessions, bikes and anything else you can think of lined the path outside each house. At times it felt like the path was coming to an end and becoming a long driveway but luckily that was never the case and the path continued to weave round, saving me from any conversations to explain to who I'm sure were very colourful characters how I'd accidentally trespassed their not so humble abodes.

The path did evenntually come to an end at a main road rather than front door. I then followed this round, which brought me past the really funky part of town - Freetown Cristiania. I didn't know much about Copenhagen before visiting but a few friends from work had mentioned this to me. I decided not to go straight in but instead explore the city a little more first and catch it again on the way out.

The other thing I knew about was the Little Mermaid statue - again informed by colleagues, about it and how underwhlming it is. It was on the water on the other side of the city to where I was and I managed to navigate on instinct to exactly where it was (this directional skill wouldn't last long...). As expected, it was cool but not that cool. It was also swarmed by tourists. I didn't want to hang around in what was a busy but windy area as those two factors spell low heart rate and a drop in body temperature. The sun was out and I'd taken my fleece off, so I felt the cold quickly when I stopped running.

After this, I headed back into the centre for a bit more sight seeing. I nearly got trapped in what I now know to be the square in front of Amalienborg Palace. I think some sort of changing of the guards or military parade was soon to start so I cut my banana break short and carried on moving. With only 7 or 8 hours between landing and take off, there really wasn't much time to waste.


Copenhagen city centre was really quite beatiful all in all, but my enjoyment would take a nose dive when I came across the famous Nyhavn and thought I'd have to walk down it. Shuffling shoulder to shoulder was not fun and after that, I made a Bee-line for the exit.

My pace was also quite slow at this point and I had some friends to meet before jumping on the plane. This meant I was getting a little stressed, and didn't have much time to explore Freetown Christinia in the usual easy going nature of most guests and residents. I had a quick run/walk through it before heading onwards. My next stop was a cafe to meet someone that I had met on our trip to Southern Africa, and her boyfriend.


Generally I'd say I've got a pretty good sense of direction. I can remember the general shape of a city or area from a quick look at the map, I can visualise the compass in front of me and I can translate that into lefts and rights pretty well. However, I can still make mistakes a lot of the time and on this occasion, my sense of direction completely broke (full James May). I wanted to be heading South-West towards the cafe. I ran South-East for a little before thinking I should be nearly there and should check the map to find exactly where I want to go. After the surprise Google Maps presented me with, I wanted to fix my mistake by heading directly West. Somehow, after looking exactly at the road I wanted to go down on screen and in real life simultaneaously, I went North after I put my phone away. When I figured out I'd made another mistake, I decided to actually start the route on the phone and head down following directions. I had 25 minutes to get there on time and I was about half an hour away.

Luckily when I showed up a few minutes late, Victoria and Yakub were already there and not insulted by the poor punctuality. Victoria helped me order and very kindly paid for the pastry I got (no idea what it was called). We sat down to eat and catch up for about half an hour before I had to run on to make my flight. They said that I was incredibly lucky with the weather, it had been sub-zero and snowing most of the week.
After a disapointed look at my watch and realising that I had no more time to chat, I said goodbye and took a slightly indirect route to the airport to hit the full marathon. I stopped the watch and navigated back through the confusing airport that I had left only a few hours earlier. I then also stopped in the Carlsberg lounge, a fairly unique option with the Priority Pass. I've neer really drunk much Carlsberg and didn't know they made more than their standard Lager. The lounge had 6 or 7 different beers on tap to try. As I was driving on the other side, I thought two small glasses was probably the safe limit given the exhaustion and empty stomach. I can't remember which two I tried but they went down wonderfully. After a quick bite to eat, I made my way to the gate and flew home. This trip was short, but enjoyable and memorable none the less.