We opted to move on today, optimistic that a town featured in the Insight Guide as Zeeland's southern most town and blessed with Denmark's best-preserved medieval buildings would prove slightly more inspiring. Surely the 14th century Goose Tower alone would make the trip worthwhile?

We made our way north round the island of Lolland and followed the pilot book's suggestion of taking a detour to the island of Vejro. This tree-clad, beach fringed low-lying island is apparently one of the prettiest in the area, but its planned development as a holiday resort has not come to fruition. Only the new harbour has been built, complete with three tier pricing structure for berths.

Formerly occupied by a handful of farmers, the island is now in single ownership - the only farmer to have survived being the one who opened up a taverna and took a part time job as harbour master. Of the two other boats in the harbour one, Maid of Straan, was a CA member - the first British ensign we have seen since the Sneekermeer. We took a walk on the sandy beach and then lunched aboard before completing our passage to Vorginborg.

At the Klappbrücke bridge we had to use the horn signal to encourage the bridge master to open for us, having received no reply on VHF, but we were soon through and could make our final approach. The channel was one of our least favourite types: shallow, with very small buoys, and littered with a forest of fishing marks. Apparently it is a public right for each person to be able to lay six fishing nets on payment of a modest due, so they tend to appear all over the place. We eventually dodged our way through the hazards and with little more depth in the harbour itself took the only alongside berth on the hammer head, despite the red cards which normally signify no mooring. We would probably have been too wide for the box berths anyway and the harbour master agreed that we were fine where we were.

The Goose tower and the surrounding medieval fortress were built by King Valdemar as a base for raids in the Baltic, and it remains the largest and best preserved fortress tower in Denmark. The name comes from the golden goose which tops the tower, which the King used to symbolise the German Hanseatic towns - cackling but harmless - which at that time were the main enemies of Denmark. A more nautical highlight of a trip to Vordingborg is a visit to the Masnedø MarineCenter on Masnedø (island) - www.mmc.dk - a well stocked chandlery with an even more extensive range available by mail order. A 15 minute bike ride from the Nordhaven it is also accessible by boat (just east of the Klappebrücke) and there is a self-service diesel pump which takes credit cards at Kr 8,06 / litre (~80p).

Cruising Statistics

Distance: 53 nm

Total to date: 760 nm

Avg Speed: 6 knots

Duration: 8:30 hours

Diesel: 71 litres

Wind: S 2-3

Mooring: Kr.135/night

Electricity: Included

Water: Included

Bridges

Klappebrücke (lift)

Charts

NV Serie 1 - S11A

S1

S11

NV Serie 2 - S17

S18

S19