Four days on Denmark’s Gendarme Path, and what a couple with blisters and a walker from Hannover taught me about finishing.
Dear Pilgrims,
I had no great plan. A long Pentecost weekend, good weather, and a set of kit I’d borrowed from a friend. That was enough.
The Gendarme Path runs from Padborg to Skelde, 84 kilometres along the Danish Baltic coast. It began as a patrol route: gendarmes walked it to stop smugglers crossing the border, right up until 1958.
Now it’s first-time walkers, cyclists with dogs, scouts, grandmothers with grandchildren, adventure types with full survival gear.
I started in Flensburg.
The first night
The first night I shared a shelter in Kollund Forest, just across the border, with three cyclists. I spend the evening swimming in the fjord, gathering firewood, of which I found very little, but the fire came together, and I was disproportionately proud of that.
We sat late into the night, talking, watching the lights of Flensburg grow brighter on the far side of the water as the darkness deepened around us.
Forty kilometres
On the second day I walked 40 kilometres. Not because I had to. The early shelter was simply too early. Dandelion seeds drifted across a small pond, still and romantic, but it was half past two, and I wasn’t ready to be done.
I put one foot in front of the other. That, I think, is the only secret to pilgrimage. It was exhausting all the same.
I arrived that evening at a shelter and campsite, worn out. I sat by the fire with a father from Lübeck who’d generously shared the leftovers from his grill with the walkers. We talked about routes, plans, what you go looking for outdoors and occasionally find.
Those conversations only happen around a fire, after a long day, when your legs are heavy and your tongue is a little looser.
What are you actually walking towards?
That same evening I helped a young couple with blister plasters. It was their first day on the trail. Too much kit, new boots. They’d misjudged what they were taking on, and had arrived anyway.
When I spoke to them the next morning, they said they were carrying on. What else would you do, they said, with a grin.
That made me think. What drives people to set off on a path at all? And when are they done?
There are pilgrims who walk the Camino and collect their certificate in Santiago, the Compostela. For them, that’s part of it, and I understand that. An external goal can do something important: it gives the walking a frame and an ending.
Not everyone knows from the start what they’re looking for. Sometimes it helps to arrive first and understand later why you went.
For me it was rarely like that. I walk when something is occupying me. A question unanswered or a decision that isn’t yet clear. The path is the tool.
The bus back to Flensburg
From Sønderborg I took the bus back to Flensburg. Sitting next to me was a walker from Hannover. She hadn’t quite finished the route, a few kilometres short of the official end, and she was visibly annoyed about it.
I told her what I think: my journey begins where I start walking, and it ends where I stop. What lies between is the path. Where you officially arrive, or don’t, is a separate matter.
She looked at me and said that was a way of seeing things she’d like to make her own.
Her walk didn’t fail because of a few kilometres. It happened. That’s enough.
If you want to walk it yourself
The Gendarme Path runs from Padborg to Skelde, over 80 km along the Flensburg Fjord and the Baltic coast. The official website at gendarmsti.dk has everything you need.
There are free shelters and campsites along the route, an app (“Shelter”) helps with finding them.
The waymarking is reliable; the walking gendarme points the way.
Best time of year? I was there at the end of May. Warm, busy, and the evenings were long.
Whenever you go, the path is waiting for you.
Buen Camino,
Alexander
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