Ulstrup Creek Trail near Aarhus – Hiking Denmark

Reaching the starting point

The Ulstrup creek trail starts on a parking place between the village of Feldballe and the town of Ebeltoft. Due to its remoteness, the parking place unfortunately can’t be reached by public transport.

To reach the starting point, you should drive along road 21 towards Tirstrup and Grenaa but only till you reach the direction sign for Ebeltoft. Turn right here and continue for 5.2 kilometers towards Ebeltoft.  Then you will see a small house and a gravel road on your left. Turn left and park your car on the grassy parking lot next to the small house (coordinates: 56.2610, 10.6208).

You can park your car there for free and the GPX route attached above starts exactly at this spot. From Aarhus it will take you approximately 40 minutes to reach the starting point of this trail.

Trail

There are many different paths in this area and thus navigating along our route is not easy. We do recommend using our GPX track which can be downloaded for free above. You can use it with a smartphone, handheld GPS device or a GPS watch.

From the parking place, start hiking on the wide dirt (called Stubbevej) towards north-east and after approximately 500 meters the wide dirt road will split into two. Take the right and after another 500 meters you will come to a crossroad. Here go right, towards south, and soon you will reach Oernbjerg Mill. Continue past the mill on the wide dirt track and after a minute you will see a grassy path on your left. Take the grassy path which will lead you towards east over slightly hilly terrain. In the beginning the path runs parallel to Ulstrup creek but eventually it turns towards south, away from the stream. After hiking for 3.9 kilometers altogether you will reach the road which connects the town of Tirstrup with Ebeltoft.

Here we decided to take s short stroll along the shore of the Stubbe lake (see the map above). However, we soon figured out that most of the land around the Stubbe lake is privately owned (meaning that we would trespass to reach the shore of the lake) and therefore we turned around and continued the hike.

Coming back on the trail, it starts to turn towards north and runs parallel to the Tirstrup – Ebeltoft road. It also offers a great view on the Stubbe lake. Soon you will come to a small farm and the path will lead you up to the asphalt road which bridges Ulstrup creek. We, however, decided to cross a meadow (in the direction of north-west) because we could clearly see the wide dirt road leading back to the starting point on the other side. Crossing Ulstrup creek had to be done barefoot as it was wider (and also colder!) than it seemed. We had a lovely break on the meadow on the other side, though.

The wide dirt road on the other side of the stream is very flat and leads back to the starting point of the hike (direction of west). It starts as Troldkaervej (Troll’s Pond Road) and then turns into Stubbevej.

Mountain Hardwear Monkey Man – Stretchy panel on the side

The Mountain Hardwear Monkey Man fleece jacket is super light but provides great warmth due to the Polartec High Loft material. It is also breathable, quick-drying and has three conveniently placed pockets. The downsides are that it gets smelly quite fast and causes static electricity when worn in combination with Merino base layers. However, it is still the best fleece jacket I have ever had, and I use it basically on every hike in cold weather. You can read the full review of the fleece jacket here.

• Note: In 2020 the Monkey Man jacket was renamed to the Mountain Hardwear Polartec High Loft jacket, but except for a few minor changes (like an exterior chest pocket), it is basically the same jacket. The links lead to the newest version.

Mountain Hardwear Polartec High Loft Jacket Buy from REI

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