Denmark Lake District Hiking - Day 5
About a mile into our Day 5 hike, we arrived at Høj Stene, a stone monument built around 600 BC for a king or queen’s burial. The layout of the stones is that of a ship with a burial mound at the bow. The large headstone of the bow is visible in the distance. This site has been restored by the Moesgaard Museum which is located adjacent to the Moesgaard Campus of Aarhus University. The Moesgaard campus is a beautiful small campus built from a 1700s manor house and is where Becca will be studying for her degree.
Speaking with the local innkeeper before heading out in the morning, he told us that the river path would be flooded for the first kilometer or two, but then would be dry beyond that. He offered to drive us to a place where we could hike on some wooded dirt roads, then join the river path well past this initial wet section. In order to see the Høj Stene, we needed to double back about a mile, but the hiking was quite pleasant.
Early on, we walked by a tree farm with young trees only 6 to 10 feet tall. There were hundreds of spider webs hanging up between the trees. We were grateful to be walking on a road wide enough to be free of these webs.
Hiking through forest, tree farms were common as they had been on Day 1 and Day 2. We would frequently see stacks of harvested wood along the side of the path. As this photo shows, some of these stacks were massive in size.
Walking along, a group of approximately 8 Fallow deer crossed the path in front of us. There was a large Melanistic (black) buck in the lead which I was not able to photograph. The remainder of the deer were Common (tan/fawn) coloring, two of which are photographed above. The black and white Fallow deer are far less common than the tan/fawn coloring with the white being the least common.
As much as Kate and I enjoyed Day 3 and Day 4, we were quite happy on Day 5 to keep our feet dry. Also, hiking on roads such as this is much less tiring than walking through 6” of water. With 13 miles to cover today, that aspect was also appreciated. We also enjoyed the change in scenery.
About halfway through the day, we did reconnect with the water, but we did so at a lake. We were pleased to see that our road remained dry.
At the end of the lake, below a dam, our path took us back along the river. At this point, the wide dirt roads that we had hiked on disappeared, and we continued on a small and apparently relatively unused path.
As we closed in on the end of our hike, the path became less and less defined. In some places, the ground became marshy underfoot, and in others it felt like we were simply bushwhacking.
Eventually, we were forced to backtrack due to the high river water creating marshland. We found a road heading away from the river. Along it was what appeared to be an uncultivated sunflower field.
Using Google Maps, we were able to navigate a dry route to the town of Bjerringbro, the end of our 5 day hike. We then collected our bags and caught a taxi back to Aarhus to spend a few more days with Becca before returning home to Massachusetts. Overall, the hike was wonderful and we find ourselves thinking about doing more inn to inn walks in the future. This hiking trip really exceeded my expectations. I was amazed at how thoroughly we were able to escape so many of the signs of civilization and be thoroughly surrounded by nature.
During our walk, I was able to photograph many new species of birds. I have only partially curated these photographs, but hope to get a post out in a day or two highlighting some of the images I like the best.