Hiking
By far the best way to experience the Mols Bjerge National Park landscape and nature is to put on sensible shoes and go out into the landscape.
MAGIC is with you all the time, when hiking through the Mols Bjerge National Park in Syddjurs Municipality, Central Jutland. The Mols Bjerge Trail is 80 kilometers of hiking through the National Park with its great variation in landscape and nature. The trail can be divided in to four daily trips of approximately 20 km.
Read more about our international certified Mols Bjerge-Trail ->
Nature shaped by ice
During the latest Ice Age, 18,000 years ago, the ice stopped its progressing in what is today the National Park on the peninsula east of Arhus.
Here it stood like a cold white wall several hundred feet above the land. The ice melted away in an inferno of stones, ice and water.
Out of these profound changes, the magical landscape was born with large curved ridges above crystal clear bays, fascinating kettle holes and glacial valleys.
Many years later, man came to the area and created with his livestock a cultural landscape with immensely high natural value.
Here, hikers can enjoy a hilly landscape lined with white beaches, spectacular historical monuments, varying scenery and charming villages.
Red kite floats elegantly high on the sky. Wild horses graze in „the Danish mountains“ with the great biodiversity of the sunny grasslands.
Impressive Bronze Age burial mounds are towering in the countryside, and from the top you look down on several blue bays.
You pass the national medieval icon, Kalø Castle ruin, a beautiful manor landscape, miles of coastline and the cozy seaport of Ebeltoft with its topped cobblestones, half-timbered houses and hollyhocks in the gardens.
The Mols Bjerge Trail: The Danish way of Ice Age hiking
The Mols Bjerge Trail consists of four daily stages of approx. 20 km between Rønde and Ebeltoft: The Kalø stage, The mountain stage - a circular route and the most challenging stage of all four-, The Ebeltoft stage and The Gåsehage stage.
The starting and ending points of the four stages are all connected by bus line 123, so it is easy to get back to your starting point - no matter where you stay overnight and from where you hike out.
When walking inside enclosures with grazing animals
There are many great hiking trails in the national park, and many traverse enclosures where a variety of grazing animals work to restore natural habitats.
As a rule, grazing animals are not dangerous and just want to be left in peace.
However, if you get too close to the flock or between a cow and her calf, the animals will react instinctively and either run away or defend themselves.
Especially dogs may provoke defence reactions. Most animals
interpret dogs as wolves and hence consider them dangerous. Perhaps the animals have experienced being chased by loose dogs or roaming wolves. The safest thing to do, therefore, is not to bring your dog into the enclosures.
Tips to protect yourself and your dog in animal enclosures
- Pay attention – even when walking along chattering.
- Keep a safe distance to the animals. The animals are not, as a rule, aggressive, but might be frightened of you and especially your dog.
- Avoid getting between adult animals and calves or foals. Never walk through a flock of animals. When the animals have offspring, they will do anything to protect them.
- Keep your dog on a short leash and make sure it doesn’t bark.
Bypass the animals in a big curve and keep you dog quiet. If the animals start approaching you, leave the enclosure immediately. If they get very close to you, let your dog off the lead to enable it to escape. This will divert the animals away from you. - Move quietly and calmly inside enclosures and avoid gesturing and loud noise – particularly when you pass the animals.
This will give you a better experience and not frighten the animals into moving suddenly – endangering yourself and other visitors.
Shorter trails | 1-6 KM
You can also choose shorter trails. The National Park have over 25 shorter trails that takes you atround the countryside and ensure that you pass trough interesting areas.
The yellow marked routes ensure that you get back to the staring point where your car is parked.
From most car parks in the area marked trails lead into the landscape, and leaflets about the area are at your disposal at the parking spaces.
There are many shorter routes of different lengths both in the hills of Mols, in the old forests near Kalø Castle Ruins, the area around Lake Stubbe, in Dråby and near Ebeltoft.
Find them in our interactive map here
Go to the left side menu -> find "Vandrestier" -> select the "Short hiking trails" and the trails will be shown on the map.
Below you can find descriptions of four shorter trails in the National Park.
Explore the new nature area Langbjerg
The national park has expanded with a new beautiful nature area at Agri. Perfect for a walk in the beautiful colors of autumn.
The area consists of previously cultivated agricultural land, forest and grazing area and, after extensive monitoring, has revealed to contain many rare species. Including the country's only known locality for a wasp species (in Danish called glat gæstehveps) as well as red-listed and rare wasps, ants and grasshoppers.
The area's permanent residents, the hardy and robust horses and cattle, have already moved in, and public facilities such as lock gates, signage, marked paths and benches will make it easier for visitors to use the area and will be established in the area during winter 2023/2024.
Suggested starting place: Parking lot at Agri (Agri Bavnehøj Vej no. 9, 8420 Knebel).
On a combined forest and coastal tour in Ruggaard Sønderskov
It is a special experience in all seasons to visit Rugaard Sønderskov, which lies on the verge of the Kattegat.
The trees grow on an almost impermeable subsoil of plastic clay and when it is particularly humid here in the autumn, you can experience how the big trees sometimes slide out and fall towards the sea.
The forest is private and owned by Rugaard Estate, but the public is welcome to visit as long as you stay on the many established forest roads and the coast itself.
Suggested starting place: Parking lot at Heksedammen at Rugaard Estate (Rugaardsvej 14, 8400 Ebeltoft).
Old love in Tolløkke Forest
Just outside Ebeltoft is the small and cozy Tolløkke Forest. Take a walk around the forest's two and a half kilometres hiking trail and enjoy the old oak and beech trees in their autumn colours. Here National Park
Mols Bjerge works to return the old production forest to a more wild and natural forest, to the delight of birds, bats, insects and the many special plants that grow here.
And if you are curious about old love stories, the beech trunks are in many places scratched and carved with hearts, names and dates, testifying that the forest was once the favorite refuge of Ebeltoft citizens who had just fallen in love.
Suggested starting place: Parking lot, Skovalleen, 8400 Ebeltoft.
Bird watching at The Gravlev Track
The approximately eight kilometre long path is built on the old railway line Ebeltoft-Trustrup. The landscape is varied, and the tour goes through willow swamps rich in chickadees and warblers near Ebeltoft, Dråby's quiet beech halls, over the open country and past lakes, meadows and fields, where you can experience and enjoy larks, coots, ducks and geese.
About 500 meters before the end of the hike in Gravlev, there is a marked path to Stubbe Sø. If you want to add bird watching to your day, you can take a quick trip past the lake to the bird.
Suggested starting points on the route: Parking lot at Netto (a supermarket) in Ebeltoft and Parking lot at Møllebækvej near Gravlev.