Bunker beach at Søndervig

Along the west coast of Jutland you find several small towns – these towns might have been old fishing villages back in the day or a small village serving the farms of the area. But today the life in these villages has changed – they focus on tourism. They generally have a lot of summerhouses spread across the sand dunes behind the beach. Some of these distracts has thousands of houses in the dunes.

One of the bigger districts is found around Søndervig. The village has a few shops and several bars and restaurants which probably attracts the crowds on a sunny day. For the moment there is only take away open so most people only gets a cup of coffee or an ice-cream on a sunny day like today.

Despite the closed borders prevent the normal droves of German tourist there is a lot of people in the village. It seems like the Danes has managed to replace the Germans for a while and reclaim this area as a national holiday resort.

It might be sunny but it is windy as well and the temperature doesn’t really feel like summer barely breaking into double digit temperature. This doesn’t stop people from heading down to the main attraction of the town – the beach. There is a steady stream of people walking to and from the beach and we decide to follow the crowds.

Down at the beach you find the large sandy beach you usually have around this part of Denmark. Other countries might talk about a 30 miles beach or even a 90 miles beach. But here along the west coast of Denmark the beach really stretch for more than 200 miles of sandy beach only interrupted by a few villages which is located at the shore.

The beach of Søndervig was a fairly easy place to land a ship if you would like to. During the Second World War the Germans considered this a problem. The allied would be able to land here easily and head across the sandy beach into the sand dunes and continue into the land behind the dunes without any natural obstacle. Therefore the Germans decided to fortify the beach as part of the Atlantic Wall stretching from the Spanish border up all the way through Norway to North Cape.

The German bunkers were pretty durable and have survived till this day – though their foundation wasn’t all that solid and the bunkers has tumbled over during the last almost 80 years. The bunkers is the main attraction for the crowds at the beach which goes to the bunkers and climb on top of some of them to pass the time.