• 305 m climbing

• 60.53 km

The boring hinterlands of Esbjerg

The first 10-20km today were dull. The landscape around Esbjerg is typically Danish which means gently rolling countryside from which all trace of nature has been removed and replaced with farmland dotted with isolated wind turbines. Think of this as a way of getting to know the real Denmark.

There’s a supermarket in Årre where we bought lunch. There we were encouraged by a very friendly lady to visit the local garden the small town had been working on. This consisted of a couple of benches and a water feature: a pleasant enough place to pause.

Klelund Dyrhave

The day finally started to get interesting when we went through the gates of Klelund Dyrhave, a private forest / estate that has a lot of wildlife; there were even signs warning of the wild boar. However after about 2km cycling we started to see a lot of “warning” signs and took a closer look… “WOLVES”.

Hovborg Kro

Disappointed and yet releived we didn’t come across the wolves, we left the forest and cycled into Hovborg where there was a wonderful typical Danish roadside inn, a Kro. Dark and dingy inside, but the classic feeling of light shining on just your table and only able to see the people close to you. I can imagine this is a properly hyggeligt place in winter too.

Definitely worth a stop , some classic Danish dishes of pretty good quality. We decided mostly on pancakes and ice cream.

Forests and moorland

From Hovborg the route goes through Høllund Søgård Plantation and onto the town of Vorbasse. After Vorbasse is the highlight of the day, 10-15km off-road through the forest of Slaugård Plantation across Randbøl Moor and finally through the peaceful Frederikshåb Forest.

As we got about halfway over the moor when a thunderstorm started to sound… and with plenty of ominous dark clouds coming quickly towards us we decided to stop where we were (it would have been 10-20 mins to go back or forward towards shelter). We parked the bikes up and took ourselves some distance from them into a depression on the moor to make ourselves less attractive targets. So for about 5-10 minutes we just sat low down whilst a torrential thunderstom passed over and recognised that although it was probably a good thing to wait in a depression to avoid lightning, depressions can get flooded pretty quickly! Fortunately the thunder passed as quickly as it arrived and on we went.

Overnight: Bindeballe Station

Just after coming off the moor, you enter Frederikshåb Forest and this is where we joined one of Denmark’s prettiest walking/bike paths: Bindeballestien, which, over 34km, links Billund, the home town of Lego, with Vejle, a pretty town at the base of an inlet on the east coast of Jutland.

We stayed overnight at the “main hub” for the path, the old station at Bindeballe. There’s an old shop still open there, that runs a campsite in summer. Unfortunately we arrived too late at night, and left too early in the morning to see the owners and the inside of the shop.