steady eddy wrote:We had plans to visit Denmark before the ferry closed but had to cancel these due to illness. Having looked at this again, without a direct ferry, crossing from Harwich to the Hook and then a train to Hamburg, seems a good way of getting nearly there if time is short. DB the German rail network runs trains from Rotterdam to Hamburg - about a 6 hour journey - and carries bikes on all but their fastest trains. They have an excellent English website and a very helpful English call centre . My preliminary investigations show that there is a regular train service from Rotterdam with around half the trains being bike friendly.
This gives you the possibility of heading northwest from Hamburg to the Baltic coast and then getting into the heart of Denmark by ferry. Its certainly an option we are looking at for next year.
I did this in reverse in 2015. It involves two changes of train usually but possibly three. It's not possible to book via the website although that's good for sorting out journey times etc. To book ring DB's UK ticket office who are super helpful and know what tickets you need for the different elements of the journey (it's not all on DB services).
An alternative to going all the way to Hamburg would be to go up to Groningen then either follow a coastal route to Bremerhaven then cross to Hamburg and points east or go more directly across Niedersachsen to Bremen and thence up to the Baltic. It's all flat so it's as much a case of whether it's speed or just the journey that's important.