Danish delights
Until recently, Denmark was the only country in the EU without a national park, opening its first, Thy, just last year. Now a second has opened and three more are planned. We sent Mark Rowe to find out what the new parks have to offer.
The view from the summit was suitably dramatic. Vast bays spread from east to west, the blue sea shimmering brightly. It was harvest in Jutland and the hills that stretched to the horizon were dotted with combine harvesters chugging back and forth. Many of the fields were narrow, retaining the medieval strip farming that’s still, rarely, found in the UK. We had climbed to the top of the highest hill in Mols Bjerge, Denmark’s newest national park. All 137m/450ft of it. Danish hikers looking for real mountain experiences must book a ticket to Greenland or one of their Nordic neighbours, but that’s not to downplay their own country’s appeal.
Mols Bjerge is located on the eastern edge of Jutland, and a network of paths totalling 100km/62 miles already snakes around the park, which is distinguished by a mixture of conifers, oak forest and dryland grass. To ‘bag’ the summit of Agri Bavnehøj took just eight minutes, but was part of a four-mile circular walk that began from the nearby village of Agri. We had passed whitewashed thatched cottages, farms as neat and tidy as Legoland, unpaved tracks, solitary oak trees and gurgling streams. Poppies and other chalkland flowers grew wild in the fields. Two parks in two years Mols Bjerge, designated this summer, is only the second national park and is modest in size, at around 180 sq km/70 sq miles. The first, Thy (pronounced ‘chew’), on the west coast of Jutland, was created last year. Denmark was the last country in the EU to designate any national parks, which may surprise those who perceive it to have green credentials, with its commitment to renewable energy such as wind power.
Part of the reason for this, according to Kim Egefjord of the Danish Forest and Nature Agency, was that existing planning legislation offers strong protection to designated areas. “Denmark is an intensively cultivated country,” he says. “But the wildlife was very fragmented and there needed to be more attention paid to nature. Denmark goes around the world with a good environmental reputation. But we looked closer to home and saw that there was a need for a higher level of environmental protection.” Securing the boundaries of Mols Bjerge National Park has proved problematic, with farmers wary that inclusion would require them to change land practices and secondhome owners hostile to the idea of hikers and day-trippers diluting their tranquillity. 
“People are always wary,” says Egefjord, who studied national parks in the UK and elsewhere in Europe to establish how to implement policy in Denmark. “They don’t see what the benefits are, or understand that a lot of urban people will spend money to come and walk and explore the parks.” Despite these concerns, access is generally not the same source of contention that it can be in the UK. Denmark does not share the concept of Allemansrätten that allows walkers in Sweden and Norway to walk pretty much anywhere they wish, but the rules are relaxed. On public land, you can walk anywhere, anytime — with seasonal exclusions for ground-nesting birds — while on private land, you can walk with similar freedom between 7am and sunset. Rare dune heathland Matters proved more straightforward 208km/130 miles away in the wilderness of north-west of Jutland, where Thy became the country’s first national park last year.
The walking here can be thrilling, more elemental than in Mols Bjerge. The park comprises 24,400ha and runs for 70km/44 miles from north to south, encompassing the most north-westerly part of Denmark. It is dominated by sub-Atlantic dune heath, a rare ecosystem in which sand dunes pervade the entire landscape — from conventional dunes pummelled by Atlantic westerlies, to dune heathland and dune forests. Dig deep enough anywhere hereabouts and you’ll find golden sand. “Just 200 hectares of Thy is cultivated,” says Ib Nord Nielsen, a ranger for the north of the park. “You can’t farm here as the land is too poor, so it was easy to decide the borders of the park. They begin and end where you can farm — nature drew them for us.”
Thy is home to two sensational wildlife areas, both of which enjoy access to viewing points during the height of the breeding and migratory seasons, and book-end the national park with lonely lighthouses. In the south lies Agger Tange, home to vast colonies and flocks of redshank, oystercatchers and lapwing. And in the far north lies the Hanstholm Nature Reserve. To explore the reserve, I struck out along the forest trail through conifers through the Tved plantation, eventually reaching a clearing overlooking Bleb Sø, a lake symmetrically rimmed with marshland. Red deer patrolled the wooded, leeward banks of the dunes, while two cranes were perched on stumps of trees in the wetlands, trumpeting to each other. Suddenly, a couple of thousand greylag geese erupted as one from the lake, circled mournfully above me and settled once more.
Another, shorter walk, starting near the road that links the towns of Thisted and Hanstholm, makes its way to the remote church of St Christopher, which dates from 1100. It was the centre of the community in the Middle Ages, but the encroaching dunes forced villagers to move east, leaving the church behind in splendid isolation. Inside, a 16th-century chalk painting depicts Adam and Eve in a dune landscape.
“Nature is the main course in the national parks, but they are also about culture and history,” said Nord Nielsen. Across both parks you can stumble upon ancient burial sites, some from 4,000 years ago. Short-walks culture A long-distance trail, the 70km/44-mile Vestkyststien, runs close to the coast for the full length of Thy. This is quite unusual in Denmark where — perhaps, again unexpectedly — the appetite for walking is generally sated by short hikes. I had started to wonder about this after completing the 6km/4-mile walk around Agri Bavnehøj, where we arrived back at the car park to find Danes who had already finished the walk puffing on cigarettes as they queued to buy the ubiquitous polser, or hotdog, from a fast-food outlet.
“People in Denmark run and cycle a lot, but they don’t really go for long-distance walks,” explains Kim Egerfjord. “Walking is not really a Danish speciality. We tend to like to walk for a mile or so from the car park, often with family.” Despite this predilection, there is already a 100km/63-mile route, the Molsruten, which links Århus — the main city on Jutland, 19km/30 miles to the west of Mols Bjerge — to Grenå, a town on the east coast, which ploughs through the national park. And as part of the footpath developments underway, a 27km/17-mile trail, linking Kalo Castle in the east of the park to the main town of Ebeltoft, will be built. In both parks, waymarking and signposting remains embryonic, although this is changing quickly as physical signs are placed on the ground.
In the four days I spent walking in Denmark’s new national parks, I found myself charmed by all they had to offer. On my last afternoon back in Mols Bjerge, I walked out across a causeway to Kalo Castle, a spectacularly broken ruin marooned in the northernmost of the snug bays that distinguish eastern Jutland. On my return, I followed the path across the road and meandered up a track for a mile or so through a delightful broad-leaved forest. I suddenly found myself just two metres from a buzzard, unusually sitting on a low branch and evidently just as surprised to see me as I was him. It flew off a few metres, settling on another branch, and kept flitting back and forth across the hedgerows as I walked up the track.
“If you are expecting mountains like the Pyrenees then the reality is you’ll have to go to the Pyrenees, not Denmark, to see them,” says Egefjord. “Denmark is ‘soft walking’. You’re not going to get lost in an exposed area as you can in Norway. Although there is solitude to be found, you’re never too far away from a village, or a campsite. But if you are interested in different cultures, our history, and scenery that’s a little different from what you have at home, then you should come here.”
Travel to: Train fares from London to Århus, the closest town to Mols Bjerge national park, start at £263 return per person (✆ 0844 848 4070; www.raileurope.co.uk). Travel around: Denmark has a good rural bus based public transport network. Local tourist offices can supply timetables and advice on connections in English. Further info: www.nationalparker.skovognatur.dk. You can also visit the website for the Danish Ramblers Association (www.dvl.dk), which has a useful English-language section and a downloadable map of the Molsruten trail between Århus and Grenå.
- This entry was posted on: Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
- Filed under: Features, Global Walking, Walk Winter 2009
- Tags: Denmark, Global Walking, long, long-distance walks, nation
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