Varnæs Vig Bro

Varnæs Vig Bro is not a harbour in the usual sense. There is no basin, no breakwater and no dredged channel — just a single timber pile pier running some 150 metres straight out from the beach and turning east in a short wing at the far end. It stands in Varnæs Vig on the west side of Aabenraa Fjord, barely ten kilometres east of Aabenraa, and is owned and run by the Varnæs Vig boat club.

The pier has 51 berths. Boats lie athwart, moored between driven piles along both sides of the main pier and out on the wing, with a couple riding at moorings in the bay. These are small craft and dinghies — the berths are even graded as dinghy, inner wing and outer wing. The committee allots them according to a boat's size, draught and manoeuvrability, and the register hangs on the noticeboard out on the pier.

The depth at the pier head is around four metres. That is the outer end — further in, the pier stands over shallow water thick with eelgrass and a stony sand bottom along the shore, and the approach is unmarked. There is no water, no electricity, no showers and no harbour master on the site.

The club was founded in 1971 and is based in Aabenraa municipality. Its bylaws state plainly how the place is kept going: extending and maintaining the pier and the yard rests on the members' own labour. The club calendar has standing pier work days and yard work days alongside the joint fishing outings, and the general meeting is held every March. The clubhouse and hobby room are reserved for members.

Ashore, though, there is something open to everyone. About a hundred metres east of the clubhouse stands a toilet building that the municipality keeps publicly accessible around the clock, with both steps and a ramp, and a defibrillator hangs outdoors on its right-hand wall. At the edge of the wood there is also a fire shelter and a fire site with grills — these belong to the local sea-kayak section and to the Danish Nature Agency respectively, not to the boat club, but they lie a few hundred metres away.

The beach off the pier is a good 300 metres long, a mixture of sand and gravel with pebbles at the waterline, and it holds a Blue Flag. Behind it lies Varnæs Tykke, a 22-hectare beech wood on hilly moraine cut through by meltwater ravines, and within it stands a protected Neolithic long barrow — 24 metres long, protected since 1937. Walking paths from the car park lead out over Varnæs Hoved to the Rævebjerg viewpoint, 31 metres above the fjord. North of the cape lie three yellow mooring buoys laid by the Danish Sailing Association from 1 April to 15 November.