zemestan

Hiking the Camøno on the Danish island Møn, part of Southern Zealand is an experience full of beautiful natural sights.

Information about the trail is somewhat sparse though. There is an official website, which describes the different stages in Danish. Unfortunately, it does not provide access to digital maps of the stages or the trail in its entirety.

Open Street Maps (OSM) has a GPX version of the trail that apparently stems from an official website run by the local government. The original file is no longer available from there though. This can be found over at OSM.

A GPX file of the entire hike is also available upon registration at hiking-trails.com.

The following describes our personal experience hiking the Camøno.

Preparation

Our preparation was brief, based on the OSM version of the hike and some further data gathered through OSM. This included a preliminary analysis of the route in Komoot, which informed us that roughly 50% of the hike would be on tarmac.

Also, we used OSMand+ to mark possible places to sleep and find places to buy food along the route.

Getting there

We got to Møn by public transport, taking a train from Hamburg, changing in Ringsted to a train to Vordingborg and finally boarding a bus to Stege. The Danish State Railway (DSB) has a recurring offer great for our purpose: Rejsepas is a ticket valid for all public means of transport inside Denmark for eight consecutive days (including high speed trains, buses, subways, …) for roughly €50.

Accommodation

Denmark's Ministry of Nature offers a comprehensive map of places in Denmark, where it is possible to sleep outside. These consist of mostly so-called “shelters”, as well as campgrounds and “free camping areas”.

• Shelters are simple huts made of wood. They are not too high, I can usually not sit in all parts of the hut and not stand anywhere inside it. They basically offer protection from the elements and require its users to bring insulation and favorably a sleeping pad of sorts. The wooden surface does not get too cold though, sleeping in a shelter with just a sleeping bag is thinkable, but uncomfortable. Most shelters are free to use, some require a beforehand reservation though. The others are “first come, first serve”. The unwritten rule is that different groups don't share a shelter, if not forced to by circumstance. The written rule actually is the opposite, that shelters should be shared with others as long as the space in the shelter allows for that. These shelters are typically equipped with individual fire places, some sort of toilet, sometimes access to drinking water, and more often than not fire wood and a saw. Many Danish families seem to use them for day trips, but they of course are equally apt to serve as shelter on long distance hikes or bike trips.
• Campgrounds are sometimes free, sometimes paid for and offer basic facilities. We did not stay at a campground on our trip.
• Free Camping Areas are designated areas, where you are free to put up a tent wherever you like. These are typically state-owned forests. On Møn, there is two such areas, but both are too close to Stege to be useful daily destinations on this hike, at least given that you start the hike in Stege. It is also possible to start the hike at other locations (e.g., Bogø), thus making these designated camping areas more useful.

Hiking

We started our hike directly after arrival in Stege, meaning we only had the afternoon for our first day. At this point, our ambition was to finish the entire 160–190 km around the island. Still, our first stage would have to be somewhat shorter than the following ones.

Stage 1 – Stege to Nyord

This stage starts out with some nice forested areas after leaving the city of Stege. In these, camping is allowed anywhere, see the part above on accommodation.

After leaving the forest and walking a fair bit on a bicycle line (tarmac), the route finally takes to the coast. After a short bit along the coast, we get back to a road (tarmac) to cross over to the isle of Nyord, today's destination. Here, we had booked a shelter beforehand, but after being welcomed by midges aplenty, we decide to set up our tent without the outer tent. Nyord is well-known in the area for being one of the darkest places in Europe (Møn actually has a dark skies certification for the entire island, whatever that means). And we were not disappointed. Even though it was difficult to stay awake until darkness, we managed to see a beautiful night sky full of stars, even with a couple of shooting stars waking us at night.

Stage 2 – Nyord to Elmelunde

Day two starts with a loop around Nyord, passing through the harbor, by a tiny second hand shop and a fancy organic food market inside a bed and breakfast. After this, it's back to Møn on the good old tarmacked road.

Once back to the island, a beautiful footpath takes us into moorlands and forest by the coast, a deserted area full of natural wonders and viking gravesides. The Camøno is ill-marked in these parts, and we lost our way several times, stumbling through the forest looking for a path. Even a friendly local walking through the forest was unable to help us here, as the Camøno is everywhere according to them.

Finally, we make it to the beachfront in a small town, only to realize that the beach offers no shade for tired hikers. The rest of the day's stage is on hot tarmac, shared with cars on a fairly busy road. By nightfall, we make it to a fairly nice place in the middle of nowhere and get to sleep in a beautiful shelter with a view of the sunset, but paid for. At least, there are cold drinks and a shower (cold shower free of charge).

Stage 3 – Elmelunde to Møns Klint

After yesterday's tormenting tarmac-hiking, we replanned today's stage using the “Wandern” profile over at bikerouter. This turned out to be a fruitful idea, as it cut down the stage's tarmac by around 50 %.

This replanned route took us through beautiful, deserted forests by the coastline, with stunning views of the waterfront and cliffs. Note that some parts of this terrain might not be too safe to hike, as there has been huge landslides in the early months of 2024. Most of the area has not been cleared by the government, hiking there is at one's personal risk.

The coastline here is impressive, the paths are mostly small footpaths close to the cliff's edge, and it even is possible to walk parts of this stage on the beach, though this has to be researched closely beforehand. Many stairways connecting the cliff to the beach have been destroyed by the landslides, only some have been repaired or rebuilt. Also, not all parts of the beach are connected to each other any longer.

The day's destination, Møn's Klint, includes a “Geo Centre” and several locations for sleeping outside. We stayed at the shelter right by the Geo Centre and the cliff, which was crowded but nice. A snoring companion kept us from our good night's sleep though, thus the following day was cut a little short.

Stage 4

The first part of today's hike was lovely and continued along the coast, with the ever descending cliff slowly turning into a beach.

Still, tired from a bad night's sleep and tormented by kilometers of tarmac and merciless sunshine, day 4 ended earlier than planned in a small harbor town called Klintholm Havn. This place must have changed a lot in recent months or years, as it is not well-mapped on OSM. We found a shelter here that was not listed anywhere, and an official map of the Camøno that was and is nowhere to be found on the internet. Upon request, the museum that organized the trail, unfortunately, was not willing to share this map. They do sell a paper map though, it is unclear to me, whether that is the same map. The one at the shelter included all official camps and variations depending on individual capabilities. We were surprised to see these, as there had not been any signposts mentioning alternative routes. We spent most of the day and a night at Klintholm Havn. Also, there is a small shop here where we were able to get some groceries for the rest of our hike.

After planning the next day's route thoroughly and exploring all alternatives, we realized that it would either be 28 km of mostly tarmac, or a similar distance on a sandy beach. Not seeing much of a reward in the next days hike, we thus came up with a different plan.

Stage 5

The result of yesterday's research had been that probably the nicest option would be to skip a day of tarmac and take the free tourist bus to a nicer part of the island instead. During our preparation, I had already found that one shelter is right by the beach and fairly remote from further infrastructure (including water). We checked the bus's schedule and found that it actually has a stop fairly close to this shelter. Thus, we packed up our stuff and made our way to the bus stop.

The hike from the place where the bus took us to the shelter was fairly short and rather boring (plenty of forest).

The shelter was pleasant but crowded, and as we already arrived at the shelter before noon (and thus were able to get one of the wooden huts there), we decided to go on a little hike by the sea and see whether we could find some water. The destination of this hike is marked as a water faucet on OSM.

Unfortunately, once we got there, we learned that the faucet was broken, so there was no water there. But we found a deserted beach and took the possibility to go for a swim and soak up some sunlight after. On the way back to the shelter, we noticed a small “Camøno Water” sign on a private house and knocked on the door. We were greeted by a friendly older man, who was more than happy to fill up our water bottles and gave us some further information about the general area.

Stage 6

Beyond this point, all possible continuations of the Camøno are tarmac. After some back and forth, we decided to head northwards through the forest and some wetlands, already heading for the hike's original point of departure.

We once again used brouter to plan today's hike. This resulted in our route going through all forested areas it could possibly go through. Unfortunately, when heading for the wetlands, we were surprised by a thunderstorm and had to seek shelter in some nearby stables. After some back and forth, and moving to a deserted school building to wait out the rest of the storm, we decided to end our day's hike at a bus stop and fetch a bus back to Stege.

From there, we would once again take the free tourist bus to Nyord, as we had found out, that a restored mail-boat would take us to Zealand. Here, there is a shelter right next to Sandvig Harbor, where the Postbåden Røret connects to, but only on Sundays in summer.

The boat was booked by a group of Danish pensioners who were happy to share some stories and took us to the nicest shelter on our trip. Here, we would sleep with a view of the sea. Also, the sun rose out of the sea to shine bright and early right into our faces the next morning.

Stage 7

Day 7 started with the sun in our faces. After this, we took to the forest, hiking to the bus stop that we had chosen to be this day's and our hike's final destination.

Even though the route follows the South Zealand Trail exactly, we were surprised by high speed oncoming traffic in the middle of the forest: a high tonnage truck didn't bother slowing down for us hikers who had nowhere to go but the underwood.

After this scary encounter, we were rewarded by some delightful trails and pleasant views though. The day's highlight was the church at Kalvehave though, which is connected to the next village by a very enjoyable footpath and offers a wonderful view of Møn and the bridge connecting it to Zealand.

This is where our hike came to an end.