Denmark Lake District Hiking - Day 3

On our third day of hiking, we followed the Gudena River east then northeast out of Silkeborg. As I have mentioned in previous posts, it has been a very wet summer in Denmark. With heavy rain before we started and some more rain on day 2, the river was flooded. As it turned out, the walking path was underwater for many miles of our hike.

The morning started out with some clouds on the horizon creating a warm sunrise over the lake near the hotel. I photographed some birds in the early morning light before heading back to the hotel for breakfast with Kate. I will end up doing one or two bird photography posts for this walking tour later.

We started our walk started by making our way northeast through the town of Silkeborg towards Silkeborg Lake (pictured above) which feeds the Gudena River exiting to the east.

Crossing over to the north side of the river, we started following the river path which had houses on our left as we exited the town. We could see that most docks were underwater due to high water from the rains. Initially the path was dry. This photo was taken after we had left town behind. With water routinely on both sides of the path, we wondered if we would find the path flooded at some point.

The scenery was beautiful and the weather was fabulous for hiking, mid-60s with intermittent sun and shade. At about the 4 mile mark, we reached a point where the path was flooded. However, we had just passed a place where we could exit the river path and walk on rural gravel roads to reconnect with the path perhaps a mile and a half later.

Choosing to keep our feet dry, we had a lovely walk up into some farmland where we saw sheep, goats, and cows.

When we initially reconnected with the river path, it was quite dry and we were very pleased with ourselves at having managed to successfully detour the flooded section while still having a very pleasant walk.

However, about a mile later, our luck ran out. At this point to stay dry, we would not only have to backtrack for about a mile, but would have had to walk miles out of the way on busy roads to get to our next inn. Interestingly, once we committed to walking in the water, it was actually surprisingly pleasant. The day had warmed up, so the water cooled our feet nicely. It turned out we were not simply going through a brief wet section, but that almost the entire last 4 miles would be underwater. This meant that our feet were completely submerged eliminating the friction that can occur when walking with damp feet.

Walking among the grasses, we were surrounded by dragonflies and damselflies. There were a number of different species, but this dark green, blue, and black damselfly was by far the most common.

At one point, this pair of damselflies were mating and dropping their eggs into the water of the path. Usually, capturing dragonflies or damselflies in flight feels almost hopeless as they are changing direction so rapidly and continuously. However, in this case, they were relatively stable while mating which allowed me to capture this shot.

After a surprisingly lovely day hiking, we arrived at our inn, removed our drenched shoes, and settled in for a nice evening.