A cycle journey to another planet in North West Denmark.

59.4km, 407m climb, easy

Description

Today starts with a very short section on asphalt from Svinkløv to Slettestrand where there are again fishing boats on the beach. From there there is a gravel track for summer house access that takes us most of the way to the forest at Tranum. A few km later following a short section on asphalt, some beach access roads and the wonderful Blokhus Klitplantage forest we come to Blokhus.

Blokhus is a well-developed summer house area with fantastic huge white beaches. Along with Løkken, they both have characteristic beach huts and a lot of space for beach activities. It’s possible to cycle all the way from Blokhus to Løkken along the beach, although we took a minor detour inland to escape from the unrelenting wind. The beach is hardpacked and easy to cycle on apart from perhaps one or two small river/creek crossings that either have closeby pedestrian bridges or can be crossed by getting a little wet.

We stopped in Løkken for lunch at Huset HAVS which did some pretty good burgers.

After Løkken there’s a short asphalt section before some single track along the tops of some fragile cliffs. In fact at Nr. Lyngby the cliffs are so fragile that they’ve taken the church and churchyard into the waters of the North Sea. Here you’ll also see the cliff top summer houses also slowly being eaten away by the collapsing cliffs. In fact if you’re reading this some time after 2023, its likely the route we took is no longer possible.

We took a final section along the road stopping at Cafe Strandfogegaarden and then its a few hundred meters single track to a tiny camping place in a forest hollow.

The highlight of the day is then the other wordly dune system at Rubjerg Knude. The shifting sands and coastal erosion are a major feature of the area, with the cliffs being eroded at a rate of 1.5m per year. You can see the dunes slowly moving into the forest, so much so that I’d expect the campsite to be gone in 50 years. The most storied element of the area is the lighthouse that just a few years ago had to be moved to prevent it falling into the sea.

Overnight

This is a difficult area to find camping or other accommodation in close proximity to the dune system. We camped in the forest but there’s a minor risk that there’ll be other people camped in the hollow (it has only place for one, perhaps two tents).

Other options are a few km North at Lønstrup.