I’ve always wanted to walk the island of Anholt around. 26 km in soft sand along the coast – it was going to be fun!
The day before, I saw Jeanette’s extensive collection of the beautiful things she found on the Anholt beaches, like stones and shells, skeletons of sea creatures and large black pillow-shaped egg capsules of thornback rays. I was dreaming of finding something like that. It was also a relief to learn that I’m not the only one carrying stones home from my beach tours.
Whilst walking around Anholt, I stayed alert (till I got tired). And my first finding was a real treasure! I walked by a small stone that looked like it had an eye on:
I thought it was just a coincidence, but stopped and turned the stone around. On the other side, there was another eye!
I couldn’t beleive it! In my hand, I was holding a fossil, a petrified fish head! What more could you wish for, walking on a beach?!
Flemming and I went around Anholt in a counter-clockwise direction. We got up around 6 a.m. and prepared for the day. On this tour, you need to bring food and water with you for the whole day. Coffee and croissants for breakfast in the harbour, and we headed on the road.
We had small breaks along the way, and when we began to see the easternmost tip of Anholt, where the lighthouse is, it was still 7 km to go, which was a kind of discouraging because we were tired.
We were happy it was overcast. On a sunny day, such a tour would be more difficult. One of our breaks was in the desert, behind the dunes:
There were some flowers around, and the smell of them was quite strong.
Somewhere in the middle of Pakhus Bay, reddish brown 24 meters high dunes appeared out of nowhere:
This place is called India (probably because of the sand colour), and in some places it looked completely untouched:
It’s not that nobody walks there, but walking in the sand is tough and slow, and all hikers tend to walk closer to the sea where the ground is more firm.
Look how many beautiful treasures we collected on the beaches of the Pakhus Bay:
We only took the pieces we felt for. The black oblong capsules in the middle are egg cases of thornback rays. Each case has stiff pointed horns at the corners, and contains (or contained) one embryo. Egg cases are anchored with an adhesive film; they hatch after about 4–5 months. These egg capsules can be washed up on the beach – that’s also where we found them.
Eventually the Anholt Lighthouse was within a couple of hundreds meters reach:
There was a long queue to get up, and we used the time to have a look around. A beautiful sculpture down a path (artist unknown):
Finally Flemming and I were on top of the lighthouse. We were proud we already did 2/3 of our tour:
In the background you can see Totten, the eastern tip of the island, which is a home to one of the largest seal colonies in Denmark. That area is closed for tourists, but the beach is open – and that’s where we went for a longer break after visiting the lighthouse.
Flemming with The Aviator by the lighthouse’ staircase:
We went down to the beach where Flemming prepared a delicious hot meal for us – chili con carne. He remembered to feed The Aviator, who was controlling the process from the Flemming’s shirt pocket:
And whist they were busy with cooking, I enjoyed laying down with my legs up – it was a well-deserved rest:
We waited for the last tourists to leave before stripping our clothes off and going for a swim. The weather had greatly improved, all clouds were gone, and we stayed on that beach for a couple of hours.
Then coffee and chocolate, and we were ready to continue.
Walking on the northern side of the island was much easier. The beaches were wider, and with the firm surface.
Whilst we walked, I talked about going to the harbour for dinner, but when we reached our camping site, I refused to walk more. The thought of doing 1 km each way extra was simply killing. We had the plastic-bag hiking food we could quickly make a hot meal of, and it tasted great after 26 km walking on sand. Flemming took his bike to the harbour (where did he had the power to do that?!), and returned with a bottle of rosé sparkling and a package of salted almonds:
By that time, our friend Thomas flew to Anholt, and pitched his tent at the same camping site. Thomas came by to say hello before going for his sunset dinner on the beach:
We slept well that night…