Anholt

Anholt lies alone in the middle of the Kattegat, roughly halfway between Denmark's Djursland coast and Sweden, and its isolation is precisely the point. The three-hour ferry crossing from Grenaa is part of the experience: by the time you step ashore into the little harbour village, the mainland feels genuinely far behind. With only around 150 permanent residents and no cars for visitors, Anholt is a place for walkers, cyclists and anyone drawn to big empty landscapes and clear northern light.

The island has two very different halves. The western fifth, around the village, is green and settled, with tidy timber houses, a church, a handful of shops and cafes, and long sandy beaches that fill gently with families in high summer. The remaining four-fifths is the Orkenen - 'the Desert' - a vast expanse of lichen heath said to be the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. It looks primeval but is in fact man-made: centuries of grazing and timber-felling stripped the island of its forest, leaving a pale, dune-strewn wilderness of grey-green lichen, marram grass and wind. Marked trails cross it, and walking out into that silence, with the sea always somewhere on the horizon, is the defining Anholt experience.

History here is bound up with the sea. In 1560 King Frederik II ordered a navigation light on Anholt to guide ships between the North Sea and the Baltic; the present lighthouse at the eastern tip dates from 1881 and still marks this busy, treacherous passage. Offshore, a large wind farm now turns in the shallows, and the ferry routes around it on its way in.

At the far eastern point, Totten, lies one of Denmark's largest colonies of seals. It is a protected reserve, closed to visitors, but from a respectful distance the animals are often visible hauled out on the sand. The surrounding waters and heath are rich in birdlife too, and the whole island is a designated nature site - part of why development has stayed so light.

Anholt is not a day-trip island in the casual sense; the ferry schedule and crossing time mean most visitors stay at least a night, in the small hotel, guesthouses or the campsite near the beach. That slow rhythm suits it. Days are spent swimming, cycling the sandy tracks, walking to the lighthouse, and eating fresh fish in the harbour as the light stretches late into the northern evening. There is little to 'do' in the organised sense, and that is the attraction: Anholt offers a rare kind of remoteness, a small green village at the edge of a desert at the edge of the sea, unlike anywhere else in Denmark.