There are many interesting paths for hiking around Als. One of them is “Alsstien” which runs along the east coast of the island. The path is close to the coast most of the way with some beautiful seascapes, going along pebble stone beaches, through beech forests and past ancient megaliths.
The whole path is around 73 km long and is in the official maps divided into three sections going from
All of Alsstien 73km hiking route from OSM
The path is in very varied terrain as the video further down will show. It is marked with blue signs with a white man. In places the route is not well marked and having the maps above at hand can be well worth it.
Together with two friends I decided to try and walk a section of the path. More precisely the section from Sarup in south to one of the shelters in Nørreskoven. We were not completely sure of how long this trip would be but expected it to be about 20-25km that we could cover in 4 hours.
View Hiking Alsstien (Nørreskoven) in a larger map
It turned out to be 18 km to the first shelter in Nørreskoven where we decided to stay for the night. The good thing about these shelters is that you do not need to bring a tent as you have a roof over your head. In our region the shelters offered by the kommune are mapped here.
There is a small area were it is allowed to camp, a fireplace with a handy grill that can be raised and lowered according to the fire. When we arrived there was a family of about 10 people who had camped in tents on the grass area.
In the shelter a local drunk had already set up but there was still room so we decided to stay next to her which turned out to be a bad idea as she kept us awake most of the night.
All in all it was part of the experience and this was the view that greeted us as we woke up.
We had thought of continuing the hike the next day but we were in for some heavy rain so rather than keep going we decided to backtrack a bit to a place were we could get picked up.
I shot some video from our hike. It’s in Danish and quite long but could be useful if you want to get an overview of the different landscapes along the route:
For more information about the path have a look at Britta from Blitzschuh’s account.