Fjords and seagrass safaris: a new cycle path along the Danish east coast | Denmark holidays

Our visit to Endelave on the Kattegat between Denmark and Sweden was a detour from the country’s other variant of the “Camino”, the Fjordmino. Opened last year, the 35-mile circular cycle route and the (partially overlapping) 38-mile hiking route circle the Horsensfjord in East Jutland.

We started in the small town of Horsens. If you set off early, you can get there in a day by train from London. We took the 7am Eurostar to Brussels, then drove through Germany and across the border, arriving late in the evening for a short stroll through the quiet streets of Horsens to Jørgensens Hotel, an 18th-century baroque mansion built by a wealthy merchant.

We were captivated by the huge old city maps on the walls of our huge room and the elaborate cornices with the golden musical instruments of an entire orchestra.

In the morning, our rental bikes were delivered by Dennis from Cykelsmeden Odder and after a lunch of a delicious mix of asparagus and other locally grown vegetables at the harbour bistro Nior, we headed out of town on a roadside cycle path, looking out for the frequent signposts of Fjordmino’s ‘Route 87’. There are some slight off-road sections on the mostly flat route, but generally it follows paved cycle paths and very quiet roads.

We travelled clockwise (you can go either way) and were soon driving peacefully through a tunnel of trees on a disused railway line, dotted with purple alliums and yellow loosestrife. We were on Jutland’s east coast, not quite halfway up the peninsula, and the landscape around Horsens was all arable fields, small neat villages and wooden church towers. Red kites and buzzards patrolled the skies, leaving the waters to avocets, geese, cormorants, oystercatchers and flocks of eiders. Our only disappointment was not seeing the sea eagles of the fjord.

Our first stop, about 10 miles away, was a B&B called Reballegård near Søvind, owned by a couple named Tine and Magnus. Tine said their 150-year-old mansion-like house had belonged to her grandparents. It had also been a retirement home (“As a kid,” she said, “I used to roll cigarettes for the old people”), a boys’ home, a rehabilitation center, a psychiatric hospital and a commune. When the couple bought it in 2022, it was a ruin. Their work restoring the house is “a lifelong project,” but the parts they’ve completed are pristine. And they’re clearly happy to welcome guests, of which we were among the first. We spent a convivial evening together, sitting in a shed, making pizzas from scratch and adding toppings from the couple’s vegetable garden.

The next day, another 13 kilometers away, we visited Lone and Søren at their vineyard and orchard, Brandbygegaard, which is right on the route. For 30 years they have made extraordinary efforts to make their organic farm as environmentally friendly as possible and have restored 90% of it to its natural state.

“It took Søren seven years to dig the lake,” Lone said, laughing. But global warming has hit them hard. They have 1,000 vines, but two years ago they had to give up all the plants of a variety that could no longer cope with Denmark’s warmer autumns. “We can only stay optimistic about the climate,” Søren said, “by improving this place.”

We tried one of their delicious sparkling wines and a very tasty apple gin made from their own cider and botanicals, the latter changing with each vintage depending on what was harvested well. “It’s the taste of the year in a bottle,” said Søren. Unsurprisingly, their annual three-week summer pop-up restaurant, specialising in home-grown ingredients, was sold out.

Of course, when you cycle around a fjord you have to cross its mouth at some point. Our free Fjordmino route map from the tourist office took us over a bridge to the large island of Alrø, from where we took the nice “bike ferry” (March-October) to a much smaller island, Hjarnø.

As an author of books about small islands and small churches, I was thrilled to take a look inside Hjarnø’s ornate church (the second smallest in Denmark) with its elaborate model of a Viking ship hanging from the ceiling.

A short ferry ride to Snaptun completed the crossing of Horsens Fjord, according to the official Fjordmino route. However, we wanted to add a bonus island off the route, so an hour later we were on Endelave, home of the hare hordes. There we spent two nights in the newly renovated Endelave Kro – a pub with small but cosy budget rooms (double £75 B&B) – in the island’s only village.

On our hike through the Kanino, Birgit told us the story of how rabbits came into being. “In 1924, some hunters ordered a few pheasants from the mainland to breed and release. However, when the package arrived, they opened it and found that it contained two rabbits…”

In the afternoon – finally under a clear blue sky – we went on a “seaweed safari” with Bjarne Ottesen from Tanggården. We put on huge waders and climbed aboard a magnificent museum trailer, which Bjarne attached to a tractor to pull us along beautiful sandy paths to the shore. After we had all waded into the sea, he picked different types of seaweed and revealed their secrets.

“There are 350 species of seaweed in Denmark,” he said, “and 50 of them are types of bladderwrack – the best seaweed in the world!” We learned about omega-6 and omega-9, amino acids and fatty acids, and how bladderwrack cleverly bursts its spore houses exactly three days after the first full moon after the summer solstice. And then, of course, we tried some of his wife Mette’s succulent fried kelp – “the vegan bacon of the sea,” Bjarne joked – and blue potato salad with bladderwrack.

On our last day, we took an early ferry back to Snaptun and cycled the last few kilometers to Horsens. We stopped for a walk on Borre Knob, a narrow peninsula with views across the fjord towards the city. After checking back into Jørgensens Hotel, we cycled through the city on a somewhat unusual tour.

“When the prison opened in 1853, it brought jobs to Horsens,” our guide Anne Katrine told us as she led us through Fængslet, a spooky former prison. “However, it also gave the town a reputation as a tough place, where you only went if you were visiting a prisoner.”

She showed us cells where notorious prisoners languished; cells from which brave resistance fighters escaped; and the 18-meter-long tunnel that Carl August Lorentzen dug with a spoon in 1949 and left his guards a note saying: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Since the prison closed in 2006, Horsens has proved Lorentzen’s statement to be true: the city has shed its grim reputation and developed into Denmark’s premier live music venue, attracting world stars such as Harry Styles. That the city now also attracts cyclists is simply a sign of the times.

The train journey was provided by Omio. From London to Horsens back via Eurostar from £225. For more information visit Kystlandet.com and kystlandet.com