Granted - this route would not even exist if it wasn’t for the semi-unknown pearl of a gravel pit found at the end of it. Most of the trip there and back is uneventful and flat as a pancake - at least for the untrained eye. That’s why it is also the shortest of the four routes, giving you plenty of time to explore the gravel pits when you arrive. They have much more than Davinde Lake to offer. Get the route here.

The route starts - perhaps tellingly - near the Rosengård center by the ring road. You ride along the ring road, along Rødegårdsvej and onto Niels Bohrs Allé before escaping the busy roads. Then, suddenly, you’ll find yourself on a lovely bike path near the university, which takes you across Lindved River, through Killerup (a 13th-century exurb, located in a wedge by Lindved River), along lush meadows and past the back of a Buddhist temple. You read that right. Why foreign temples and prayer houses always lie in the most unimaginable places has always amazed me; maybe there just isn't that much money in religion anymore.

Follow the cycle path to Holluf Pile, that takes you through a completely enclosed tract house community, with an abundance of activity on the paths, with sizzling coffee jugs and Friday entertainment blaring nonstop behind the hedges. Then, cross Hvilehøjvej over to Telehøjen - a giant abandoned industrial complex that's looking to be sold to the next giant company whose employees love to look at parking lots while they work and have easy access to the highway.

Continue on the bike path that takes you across the highway and right through the middle of Over-Holluf, an idyllic village with a pond and Morten Korch's hometown, which has been symbolically sandwiched by the highway and industrial areas, yet lies here as if nothing has happened in the last 100 years. Just like a Morten Korch movie, for which you can also find a memorial stone by the pond.

I have often thought about how many small living villages in this part of Odense have disappeared - if not in reality - then at least in memory, because of the highway, and the increasing number of practical commercial buildings, and similar eyesores. Well, at least most of them, though Kompans headquarters, which you will pass by, does make an honest attempt to tell you it's a company that with a playfulness to it.

Continue on Over Kæret and Over Hollufvej until you reach the bike path along Ørbækvej (where you can find a holy spring on the opposite side if you need some extra strength). Then turn left onto Tingkærvej where the landscape is open and the houses are scattered along the road. If you want to pop by Sanderumgaard's romantic garden, then turn left on Rødelågevej. Otherwise, continue straight out to Davinde village - or Daffwinge - which is the slightly cooler original name, as a kind of mix between a ducklike Disney figure and early computer game titles. Here you have to turn right at Davinde Bygade and immediately past 'Bø-manden' (could it have been ‘købmand’, once upon a time?)

And then - in the middle of nowhere - you are suddenly face-to-face with a man-made natural pearl, as a result of decades of gravel excavation. Davinde Lake is on your right. Whenever I ride this way, I'm reminded of an interview with the director of the gravel excavation in these parts, who explained that excavations only get started in places where there are no special natural qualities. Which explains the surprising feeling of driving through flat agricultural landscape without anything to look at and then suddenly standing in the middle of a huge gravel pit that is slowly transitioning from cultural to natural landscape.

You can turn around and drive back the same way once you have enjoyed, bathed in or biked around Davinde Lake, but it is actually here your trip begins in earnest. Because the area is made up of a myriad of small lakes that can be explored just as your heart desires. You can also visit the Hudevad Blacksmith Museum (when it opens), which is equal parts village smithery, art smith, and radiator factory – I mean, come on. How brilliant is that? And what about the name Hudevad (which in Danish sounds like Skin-What?) isn’t that a bit weird? Sure, but weirder still when you learn that the name comes from denoting a place where you were supposed to stand and shout the best way across the river to passing city-folk.

26km. 110 vertical meters. Through some of the most tedious man-made things, to some of the most fantastic.