Two weeks of sunshine and sea in Denmark in October. Yes, pleaaaase.

Bikepacking has become a pretty big part of my life by now. What started as loading up my bike with bags once a year quickly turned into three or four trips a year – and every time, I'm reminded of how little you actually need to be out on the road for a few days or even longer.

This time, we're heading to Denmark. We live near Hannover, so it's actually not that far away, yet somehow our bike trips have always taken us south. Denmark, with its network of shelters and all the small roads and paths along the coast, seems almost made for bikepacking.

Just before we left, the promising autumn sunshine turned into a mix of wind, rain and some pretty heavy showers. If you've been following my trips for a while, you probably know that a rain cloud seems to follow me around with impressive reliability. My friends now get a little disclaimer before every trip because the chances of bad weather seem to approach 100% whenever I'm involved.

Sometimes I really do wish for a trip where the sun is shining, the wind is at our backs and everything just feels easy. But somehow, I've made peace with it.

So we make our way along Denmark's west coast, riding through changing winds, rain and the occasional stretch of sunshine. The wind shifts between north and west and quickly becomes a constant companion. We head towards Esbjerg and stop in Ribe for a bowl of soup to warm up before continuing on to the next shelter.

These simple routines are exactly what I love about bikepacking: eat, ride, arrive somewhere, sleep and head out again the next morning. You suddenly fall into a completely different rhythm. Your head gets quieter, conversations get longer and things that seem important in everyday life tend to lose their meaning after a few hours on the bike.

Every few hours, Tim checks the weather and we try to sit out the heaviest showers. But when rain is forecast for the entire day, there's really only one thing left to do: keep riding. We have enough layers to stay warm, and once you're wet, you're wet for a while anyway.

The shelters in Denmark are especially perfect in autumn. These little wooden huts become our home for the night. We cook something, dry our clothes and enjoy the fact that we don't have to pitch our tent in the rain.

One of these nights, we stay at Lodbjerg Fyr in Thy National Park. In the evening, we climb up the lighthouse and have a look around the small museum, which is open 24 hours a day. We're the only people there, with nothing but darkness and silence around us.

These are the unplanned moments that tend to stay with me the longest after a trip. You never really know where a route will take you, who you'll meet or what story might be hidden behind a seemingly unremarkable place.

Especially on trips where the weather is unpredictable and sometimes pretty demanding, I realize just how important good equipment is. For me, the best sign of good gear is when I barely think about it throughout the entire trip.

A bag shouldn't move around, nothing should swing unnecessarily and I don't want to constantly wonder whether everything is still securely attached. Equipment is at its best when it simply works in the background and you can rely on it without giving it a second thought.

For anyone thinking about exploring Denmark by bike themselves, my tip is the Shelter app. It lists shelters all across the country and shows you which ones are free and which have facilities such as toilets or fire pits. It's incredibly useful for spontaneous bikepacking trips and gives you the freedom to leave some room for the unexpected instead of planning every single kilometer in advance.

Because maybe that's the best way to experience Denmark: not rushing from one fixed point to the next, but simply setting off, feeling the wind, stopping for a cardamom bun and seeing where you end up at the end of the day.

And when you have bags with you that you never have to think about along the way, then honestly, everything is pretty much exactly as it should be.