The biggest island of the Danish tidal sea

Out in the water a few miles away from South West Jutland there are a few islands in the tidal sea of Vadehavet national park. The biggest of these islands are Rømø though it doesn’t have the biggest population and only a bit over 500 people still live there all year around.

The main business of the island is tourist – the island is famous for the widest sandy beach anywhere along the west coast of Denmark. And the beach is indeed wide – when you reach the beach you will still have to walk far to finally reach the water – just how far depends on the tide but even at high tide you will still have to walk for a kilometer or more. In fact not many people walk to the water instead they take the car and drive most of the way out to the water line – just make sure you don’t get caught in the tide of the area.

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The west coast of the island is dominated by this long wide sandy beach and behind the beach is one of the biggest hills you will find on the island – it is the high dike which is protecting the island against the fall and winter storms which can be very strong out here.

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Behind the famous beach of Lakolk there is a lot of summerhouses this large settlement of summerhouses mean the population of Rømø increase many folds during the summer where thousands of tourist flock to the beaches mainly from Germany but also a lot of Danish tourist go as well to enjoy the beach.

After having been to the beach of Lakolk it is possible to explore other parts of the island – we head down to the southern end of the island where there is a small town of Havneby which translates into harbor city. The city is the only proper town on the island since the city of Lakolk is basically just a settlement dedicated to serving tourist. The main thing in the harbor is the ferry to the German island of Sylt which apparently is quite popular with German tourist going to Sylt since it is cheaper to go by the ferry than putting your car on the train going to Sylt – there is no road to Sylt.

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Even though the city of Havneby is a bit of an actual town there is still a lot of houses in the area which is clearly not used as a full year residence but only in use as recreational housing used a few weeks a year by the owners or more likely rented to tourist during the summer and maybe a few weeks during the rest of the year.

Next to the city there is a large bird reserve which is completely closed for people during the breading season which is going on for the moment so we had to stay just outside the reserve and look at the birds eating just offshore during a bit of low tide.

Driving to the northern end of the island we get by a lot of thatches roof houses which are quite charming – if you rent a summerhouse on this island it is actually likely it will be a thatches roofed houses which can give a bit of charm to your holiday – but don’t expect to get good reception for your cellphone indoor.

The north of the island is home to an old home of one of the many rich captains who used to live on this island – there was a lot of shipping and whaling going on amongst the local population. This building was one of the best preserved examples of a wealthy boat owner home and has been turned into a museum run by the national museum of Denmark. Unfortunately this museum has been closed down along with all other museums in Denmark and despite the opening of the museums this one still hadn’t reopened during our visit to the island. So we could only see the house from the outside and it was fairly impressive but we could only guess what it looked like on the inside.

From the old house we drive to the north of the island which is partly off limits since it is some sort of military area – I am not sure what it is used for exactly but they do warn about some sort of lasers. The area up here isn’t the most interesting on the island but you might be able to do a little hiking in the area if no military activities are going on – though we decided just to drive back via the long dam connecting the island to the main land.