Balle is a small village in eastern Djursland, but for us the most memorable part of the area was not the village itself. It was the coast a few kilometres away at Glatved Strand, a wonderfully isolated stretch of the Kattegat where an industrial landscape and an unexpectedly beautiful natural setting meet in a rather unusual way.
We first tried a possible stopping place on Glatved Strandvej, on the other side of the stone-processing works. The setting itself looked very nice and there was plenty of open space, but there was an obvious problem: the road leading to it passed directly through the working plant. As the factory was still operating when we arrived, the parking area was effectively inaccessible, and the route through the site also gave us the impression that we would be crossing private industrial property. We therefore decided not to use it and continued looking.
That turned out to be a good decision, because a little farther along the coast we found a much better place directly above Glatved Strand.
At first sight it was not particularly inviting. The surroundings looked slightly shabby and, with the nearby gravel works and loading structures, even a little spooky. It was the sort of place where we initially wondered whether we had made the right choice. Once we stopped, however, the atmosphere changed completely.
We were there in high season and were completely alone. Nobody bothered us, nothing happened and we felt perfectly safe. Instead of industrial noise, what we mainly heard was the sound of the waves breaking on the pebble beach below us. The view across the Kattegat was stunning, and having such an open stretch of coastline almost entirely to ourselves made the place far more memorable than its first appearance had suggested.
There were virtually no facilities. Apart from a rubbish bin, there was nothing at all, but the parking was completely free. For us this was exactly the sort of place where the lack of services hardly mattered: it was the location, the peace and the sea that made it worthwhile.
Glatved Strand itself is not a classic sandy Danish beach. Much of the shore is covered with pebbles and stones, and the seabed becomes deep surprisingly close to land. That gives the coastline a rather wilder appearance and also explains why the area is particularly well known for fishing. Sea trout, cod, flatfish and garfish can all be caught along this stretch, and the deep water also attracts divers. Swimming is possible in suitable conditions, although the rapidly increasing depth means that it is better suited to confident swimmers than to a typical shallow family beach.
The landscape behind the beach also explains why the industrial activity here is so prominent. Glatved lies at the eastern end of the enormous Tirstrup outwash plain, created at the end of the last Ice Age. Meltwater poured westwards from the edge of the ice near what is now Glatved Strand, carrying huge quantities of stones, gravel and sand with it. Those deposits can still be tens of metres thick near the coast.
For centuries they were simply part of the landscape; in modern times they became a valuable source of raw material. Large quantities of stone, sand and gravel have therefore been extracted around Balle and Glatved for construction and road building. The quarries and processing works that initially make this part of the coast seem rather industrial are actually exploiting material deposited here by glacial meltwater thousands of years ago.
There are even much older traces of people around Balle. During the Stone Age, the valley of the small Hoed Å was still connected to the sea as a narrow arm of a fjord. As the land gradually rose after the Ice Age, the fjord disappeared and became the present stream. The fertile ground around it attracted some of the area’s earliest farming communities.
Around 3200 BC they built megalithic tombs near Balle. Several dolmens survive in the surrounding countryside, including the remains of ancient burial chambers constructed from enormous stones. Just north of the village is a particularly remarkable chamber hidden inside a mound, reached through a narrow stone passage. Archaeological finds there, including human bones, stone tools and pottery, date it to Denmark’s Neolithic Funnel Beaker culture.
It is an extraordinary amount of history for such an apparently quiet corner of Djursland: an Ice Age landscape beneath the roads, Stone Age tombs beside the village, modern gravel extraction along the coast and the Kattegat immediately beyond it all.
Balle itself remains a small rural community, while Glatved Strand, only a few kilometres to the south-east, provides the village with a very different landscape. The coast feels exposed and remote despite being less than fifteen kilometres from Grenaa, making it particularly convenient before or after using the ferry while still feeling completely removed from a port or town.
That was ultimately what we liked most about our stop here. When we arrived, the combination of gravel, industrial structures and an almost deserted parking area did not immediately inspire confidence. A few hours later it felt completely different. We had an uninterrupted view of the sea, nobody around us and little more than the sound of the waves.
Balle and Glatved Strand were therefore another good reminder that some of the places we remember most from a journey are not the polished or obviously picturesque ones. Sometimes a place that initially looks slightly strange turns out to offer exactly what we were looking for: freedom, silence, a beautiful view and a night beside the sea.