After Aarhus we continued south to Horsens, where our stop was much more practical than touristy. We checked several places around the town before settling on what worked for us. Horsens has quite a few possible motorhome parking spots, but they vary a lot: one near Østbirkvej was basically useful only as a short motorway stop because of the traffic noise, while Åbjergskovvej was a small dirt parking area better suited as a starting point for walks. The gravel car park on Schüttesvej was in town beside a public park and playground but was surprisingly quiet. Our best experience, however, was at 35B Skovvej, which was well kept and gave us a quiet night; the important limitation there was the 3.5-tonne maximum.

Horsens itself did not immediately strike us as one of Denmark’s prettiest towns, and I would not put it in the same category as Ebeltoft or some of the smaller historic places we had visited earlier. It is a fairly normal Danish town, with residential districts, shopping streets, green areas and a waterfront that still shows its industrial past. For us that actually made it useful as a stop on the journey: there was no need to spend hours looking for the perfect scenic place, and the quieter parking areas outside the centre worked better than trying to stay right in the middle of town.

The one thing that makes Horsens genuinely unusual is FÆNGSLET, the enormous former state prison. The prison was built between 1847 and 1853 and remained in use until 2006. Rather than demolishing it after the last prisoners left, Horsens converted the complex into a cultural site containing the Prison Museum, event spaces, concerts and even accommodation in part of the former prison. (Fængslet) The museum still uses the original corridors, cells and prison buildings and includes, among other things, an 18-metre escape tunnel dug by a prisoner. (Horsens Museum)

That prison history is more important to Horsens than it may sound. For more than 150 years the institution was one of the town’s most recognisable landmarks, and its conversion has become one of the main reasons visitors now know Horsens. The former exercise yard is even used as a concert venue, which is quite a change of purpose for a place originally designed to keep people inside. (Fængslet)

There is another local connection that is easy to miss: Vitus Bering, the Danish explorer whose name survives in the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, was born in Horsens in 1681. Museum Horsens still gives considerable attention to him and his expeditions, and its archaeologists were even involved in work connected with locating his grave on Bering Island. (Horsens Museum) It is one of those facts that makes the name of a fairly ordinary Danish town suddenly appear on a much larger map.

For us, Horsens worked better as a comfortable stop on the route south from Aarhus than as a major destination in itself. We found a good quiet place for the motorhome, had several alternatives around the town, and then continued towards Vejle. It was not one of the most scenic stops of the trip, but it was easy, practical and more interesting once we understood the prison history behind the town.