Rail route of the month: the slow train to Skagen, Denmark, where the North Sea meets the Baltic

Our slow-travel expert passes forests, dunes and sea to reach the country’s northernmost railway station

By the time you reach Aarhus on the train from the south, there is a sense of having penetrated deep into Jylland, the long Danish peninsula whose name is often rendered as “Jutland” on English and German maps. At Fredericia, a one-time garrison town on the east coast, the overhead wires give out. North of here it is diesel traction only on a railway that links the heads of several long sea inlets on the ride up to Aarhus.

The railway station at Aarhus, four-and-a-half hours from Hamburg on the occasional direct train, is a handsome terminus and, for many travellers, the northern extent of their Jutland journey. But some trains reverse in Aarhus, looping around the west side of the city, and then meander north. There’s a lot of Jutland still to come, and the 160-mile journey from Aarhus up to Denmark’s northernmost railway outpost at Skagen is a scenic delight. It offers not grandeur, but a pleasing mix of forest and heathland, agricultural and coastal landscapes. This is a journey to the very end of Denmark. Skagen itself is an extraordinary community, perched on a fragment of land poking into the sea where the waters of the Skagerrak and Kattegat straits mingle.