Denmark (20min) Coast


Denmark (20min)

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Beaches, boats and bicycles?

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I must be in Denmark.

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This stunning, windswept coast is apparently home

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to the happiest people on earth,

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and now we're here to meet them, our North Sea neighbours.

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We've crossed the North Sea to embark on a great Danish journey.

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I'm travelling down the coast of Jutland

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heading for the Isle of Fano in the south,

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starting as far north as you can go, Skagen.

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'This is the tip of the top of Denmark,

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'where two great bodies of water meet.'

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Look at this, Denmark is a country that actually comes to a point!

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A few steps this way, I'll be in the North Sea, headed towards home.

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A few steps this way and I'll be in the Baltic, headed towards Russia.

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Now this is my kind of coast-to coast-walk!

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'And I'm not the only one.

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'Crowds of Danes come here to witness the eternal battle

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'between the twin seas.'

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It's captivating to watch opposing currents collide

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as two waters wrestle for control.

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Many Danes make something of a pilgrimage

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to this picturesque province of Skagen.

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Why does the heart and soul of a nation seem to lie

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at its most northerly tip?

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'I'm hoping Skagen Museum Director, Lisette Vind Ebbensen can shed some light.'

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Oh, yeah. It's so flat, and the sea on either side,

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it just feels like the sea could take it.

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Yes, take it all, yeah.

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British people are fond of saying that they are a sea-going island race.

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Do Danes have this connection to the sea?

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I think it is. yes, and it probably goes back to the Vikings.

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We're still proud of the Vikings, I suppose,

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and the coast, and the sea does mean a lot.

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And, I mean, in Denmark you're always close to the sea,

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and especially here in Skagen where you have two different seas.

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I've heard, that the Danish are the happiest people in the world.

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Can that be true?

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Well, I've heard that as well, and I guess the Danes are very happy.

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-Why?

-There's only like 5.5 million people here

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and Danish people are happy people, they're warm,

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they have a lot of hygge.

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-Hygge?

-Hygge is really hard to translate to any language in the world.

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It's a very Danish work, and I suppose it means friendly or cosy.

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We can have a hyggely time.

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A hyggely time? You're making this up.

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-No.

-Is this just something that Danish people say to foreigners to make them go away?

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# Oh, the good life

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# Full of fun

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# Seems to be the ideal... #

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'For my first lesson in this uniquely Danish concept of hygge,

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'I've got to get on my bike, like everyone else here.

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'Am I having hygge?

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'Maybe. Something tells me I need to investigate further.'

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Every summer in Skagen they celebrate the longest day

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with a giant bonfire and whole lot of hygge down on the beach.

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Sankt Hans is all about hygge.

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Sankt Hans is all about hygge.

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Sankt Hans, St John's eve,

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is a festival of light from the earliest times.

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The celebration of Sankt Hans is a very old tradition

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started by the Vikings or years before Vikings.

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You put the witch on the fire,

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then you light the fire sending the bad spirits away.

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You come dressed as you are,

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you don't have to dress up to come and hyggesheim.

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You'll go and sit on the beach,

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and you have some wine and it will all be hygge.

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And people will have a beer and just walk around, and have some small talk with each other.

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It's very romantic.

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All the students come down here to the bonfire

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and they want to throw their notes just before the fire is getting started.

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as a sign of "we don't need them any longer".

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So it has become a tradition

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that they all do that for Sankt Hans evening now.

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It's a big bonfire, you can feel it,

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we're standing 50 metres away,

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suddenly the heat is there and it's an incredible heat.

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It was a lovely evening,

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we had some good food and a very hyggely evening.

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It may be 11 at night, but the sun's yet to set

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and there's a lot more hygge to be had before dawn.

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My journey continues south along the shore of Jutland.

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This is a protected stretch of beach,

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and you won't find many houses,

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but strangely, you can park right on the sand.

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No pay and display here,

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but take local advice, tourists regularly get stuck,

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and getting caught out by the tide costs more than a parking ticket.

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Just behind the dunes, Miranda's seeking some residents

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who've happily parked themselves in a very protected spot.

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It's just after dawn, and I've come here to find some animals you don't

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normally expect to be living by the sea, and that's red deer.

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WHISPERING: This is great. I'm at the edge of the forest, using the forest as cover.

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The deer are feeding out on this open grassland.

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You can just see the dunes, and obviously there's the sea just behind me.

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He's just put his head down, but I think that the deer

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feeding behind us is probably a young male, just had tiny antlers.

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'It's hard to get close to them. These shy creatures are easily spooked.

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'But the serenity of the scene isn't quite as it appears.

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'These red deer have rather noisy neighbours.'

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They share their home with the Danish army.

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This is a restricted zone,

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off limits to everyone not driving a tank.

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Oddly, this unusual relationship between wildlife and warfare seems to work.

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'I want to see it from the military perspective.'

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Fritz, tell me how long the Danish army has lived side-by-side with the red deer here.

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We have actually being living together since 1928-29

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approximately, so we know each other quite well, I have to say.

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We have a little bit of a strange neighbourship because

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when we are outside of our vehicles they are gone,

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but when we're inside our vehicles we have no problems,

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they can stay just beside the vehicle,

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and it means they feel, if we are starting shooting and so on,

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they just slowly disappear from the area.

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All around the shooting area there is a big forest

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so the deer can go into the forest

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and stay there for a long period and come out again if we are finished.

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-And do you like having them around, is it nice?

-Very nice, yeah.

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'Despite the disruptions, the deer love being beside the sea.

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'There's tasty heather and shelter in the dunes from the constant wind.

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'It's early autumn and the rutting season has begun.

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'Ole Daugaard-Petersen is head of the deer reserve.'

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There's interesting activity going on in the group down there.

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There's a large number of hinds and there's that big stag

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that's constantly patrolling, looking after that group of females.

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Just now the mature stags are rounding up the hinds and

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the point is he wants to mate with all of them.

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He wants to keep his competitors away,

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and you will see the young stags

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circling around the herd,

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hoping to get the chance to get a go with the hinds,

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and the mature stag, he will keep them away.

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So he can keep going for two, three weeks rutting, no eat, no nothing,

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and then you will see the stag,

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suddenly he will be lying sleeping for a few minutes,

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up again and so he carries on for three weeks,

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and then it's done and he leaves his hinds.

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He might have lost 30-40 kilos during those three weeks,

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so he's really busy, you know?

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'Three weeks of rutting with barely a break,

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'these majestic stags have got some serious stamina.'

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We've reached Denmark's most westerly point, Blavandshuk.

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A top spot for a great view.

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Just three miles or so off the coast here is the most notorious reef

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in the whole of the North Sea.

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In the days of sail it was known to the skippers as Duyvels Horn. The Devil's Horn.

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'Once the graveyard of countless ships,

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'today, Horns Reef is helping to save the planet.

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'It's home to one of the world's largest off-shore wind farms.'

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This is a site that's set to be increasingly familiar off our shores,

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but what you don't often see is how these big beasts get built.

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At the port of Esbjerg, engineer and green enthusiast, Dick Strawbridge,

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is about to discover how the pieces fit together.

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They assemble what bits they can on the quayside before shipping them out to sea.

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Bolting the blades on is job number one.

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The bloke in charge is Siemens's technical wizard, Jesper Moeller.

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-It's huge!

-This is a 45-metre blade made out fibreglass.

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It's just literally fibreglass?

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Yes, it's fibreglass, fibreglass and balsa wood, and it's cast in one piece.

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Hold on, say, "It's cast in one piece" again.

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There's an echo, it's long enough to give you an echo.

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The shape is developed over many years

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and it's actually consisting of different aircraft blade shapes.

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This is the tip, but you look at that, that's sharp.

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It's not quite straight.

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It has a slight curve, because when it's pointing up towards the wind

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-it has a slight bend towards the wind...

-It flexes.

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It flexes, then when the wind pushes on it, it straightens out.

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Everything looks shiny and new right now, but out in the North Sea,

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these turbines are going to face a right battering.

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So why go to all the trouble of sticking them nearly ten miles offshore?

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Well, offshore has a lot of advantages.

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It has a very stable flow of wind.

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Lots of constant wind?

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Yes, and also higher wind compared to onshore locations.

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It's time for this landlubber to brave the North Sea and take a look.

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The installation vessel is already on its way, and I'm hot on its heels.

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Another good reason to build out here, no complaints from the neighbours.

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'But some people DO have to live near the turbines,

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'and the maintenance team need a house.'

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We're about 40 kilometres off the Danish coast.

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This is the accommodation platform, and we're in the middle of nowhere.

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'The engineers share the platform with an electrical sub-station.'

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There's lots of technology here,

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and that's not surprising as all the electricity from the wind turbines

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is sucked in here before being sent ashore,

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and when the wind blows, there's enough electricity to power 20 million light bulbs.

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This is a paradise for engineers.

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It may look like the turbines are in nice neat rows, but it's more complicated than that.

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The turbines aren't in a block, they're in a fan shape,

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which means when the wind blows from the west,

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any turbulence doesn't reduce the efficiency of the other turbines,

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so all the energy from the wind can be captured by the wind turbines and turned into electricity,

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and there's absolutely masses of it.

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The installation vessel is now in position,

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and they've started to erect turbine number 70.

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I'm on my way.

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Denmark's the land of Lego. This is the ultimate big piece of kit to put together.

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Seapower with its crane is going to assemble it all, good job.

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So, how do they do it?

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It's a really simple system.

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They drive a mono-pile into the sea bed about 20 metres, then put the yellow section on -

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actually the transition piece - and they make sure that's perfectly vertical.

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Then they've already added on one piece of tower,

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we're about to see a second piece of tower go on,

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then they'll shove the turbine on the top, then the blades and it's done.

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The engineers are battling to complete the job before the autumn storms hit.

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In calm weather,

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they can put up three turbines in 24 hours of non-stop effort.

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This thing is massive!

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Thank you.

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I've got to get myself one of these.

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It's awesome!

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This beauty is over 1.5 times taller then Nelson's Column,

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but the technology doesn't stand still.

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The ones planned for our seas will be even bigger than these guys.

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Look out for them coming to a coast near you.

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'I'm on the final leg of my journey.'

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In my quest for happiness Danish-style,

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I'm off to visit a very contented community on the island of Fano.

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'My destination, the Isle of Fano, Denmark's oldest holiday resort.

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'Life here's laid-back, the legacy of a privileged past.'

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In 1741, this canny community clubbed together

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and bought their island from the king,

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and soon the good times started to roll with a whole lot of happiness ever since.

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'Originally, the island's wealth was built on shipbuilding.

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'The money was put into bricks, mortar and thatch.

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'My quest to experience hygge in Denmark

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'has come to a cosy conclusion.'

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# It's the good life

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# To be free and explore the unknown... #

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For me, this place embodies what I understand of the Danish concept of hygge.

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If it's about finding contentment in comforting, cosy places,

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then there's definitely hygge here.

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Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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