Beaches in Denmark

Seven thousand kilometres of coastline on a country the size of a large county, most of it sand, and no point in it more than fifty kilometres from the sea. The two sides are unalike: the North Sea coast of Jutland is dune, wind and migrating sand, with Råbjerg Mile near Skagen the largest moving dune in northern Europe, travelling east by around fifteen metres a year and burying what it crosses; the Baltic side is calm, shallow, warmer and where Danes actually swim. At Grenen, the northernmost point, the Skagerrak and the Kattegat meet visibly in a line of colliding water, and swimming there is prohibited because of the currents it produces. The west coast also carries rip currents that drown people most summers, and the flag system at the patrolled beaches is worth reading. Summer houses rather than hotels are the Danish form of a coastal holiday, and there are hundreds of thousands of them. The water is cold and this is not treated as an obstacle: winter bathing is an established practice with clubs, huts and a season of its own. Practically: public access to the shore is guaranteed by law and the coast is walkable almost in its entirety, the season runs late June to August, and the Wadden Sea in the south-west is a World Heritage tidal flat where the walk out is guided and the tide is not negotiable.