After Fredericia we crossed the Little Belt and reached Middelfart, our first proper stop on Funen. Here the water was again the main reason the place was worth stopping for. Middelfart sits directly on one of Denmark’s narrowest and most interesting stretches of sea, with the old railway and road bridge immediately beside the town and the much larger motorway bridge a little farther north.
One of the places we tried was on Oddevejen, right beside the water. The location itself was very good: quiet, peaceful and free of charge, with the Little Belt immediately in front of us. The parking area is divided into two sections, one intended for motorhomes and another for general parking, where there was a three-hour maximum stay. The main problem was simply its size. We arrived at about 1pm and it was already extremely busy, and because the car park is small, manoeuvring our 23-foot motorhome was difficult.
This is also where Middelfart immediately becomes more interesting than an ordinary small Danish town. The Old Little Belt Bridge is right beside the coast and is still used by road traffic, trains, cyclists and pedestrians. It opened on 14 May 1935 after ten years of construction. About 50,000 people attended the inauguration, the Danish royal yacht Dannebrog brought the king, and a special train carrying 850 guests crossed the bridge as part of the opening. The bridge is 1,178 metres long and fundamentally changed travel between Jutland and Funen, replacing the old ferry connection at this point.
Since 2015 it has also been possible to walk along the top of its steel structure through Bridgewalking Lillebælt, around 60 metres above the water. Middelfart claims it is the only place in Europe offering this type of bridge walk. We did not need to go onto the top of the bridge to appreciate it, though: from the shoreline it dominates this part of the Little Belt and gives Middelfart a much more distinctive setting than we had expected.
The newer Little Belt Bridge, opened in 1970, carries the motorway and took over much of the road traffic from the old bridge. It is considerably larger, at 1.7 kilometres long, with a 600-metre main span and three motorway lanes in each direction. Seeing both bridges at once is one of the best views around Middelfart because they represent two very different periods of Danish infrastructure only 35 years apart.
We also checked other possible places around Middelfart rather than simply staying at the first waterfront car park. One of them, on Galsklintvej, was much less appealing to us as a place to spend time. It was close to a very busy road and noisy during the day. The parking area itself was sloping, although it was arranged in rows and had plenty of room. We also did not see any water point there.
The water around Middelfart has another unusual feature: harbour porpoises. Thousands live in the Little Belt throughout the year, and the area is one of the best places in Denmark to see them, particularly between May and August. They can sometimes be spotted directly from shore around Middelfart, including from the harbour and Galsklint.
Middelfart’s relationship with porpoises was not always about wildlife watching. For centuries, hunting them was an important local industry. Hunters drove the animals into shallow water and killed them mainly for their blubber, which was rendered into oil for lamps. Organised hunting in the area dates back to at least the sixteenth century and survived in various forms until the twentieth century; porpoises were legally protected in Denmark in 1967. The Porpoise Well in the old town still commemorates that part of Middelfart’s history.
The geography explains why so much happens here. The Little Belt is only about a kilometre wide at its narrowest point and reaches depths of around 80 metres. Water is forced through the confined strait between Jutland and Funen, producing strong currents and a particularly rich marine environment. The surrounding marine nature park covers about 370 square kilometres.
For us, Middelfart was mainly about the Little Belt rather than the town centre. The waterfront stop was pleasant but far too busy for its size, while some of the alternative parking places were considerably less attractive. But the coastline, the old bridge, the views towards Jutland and the amount of marine life make the area worth stopping in. After Fredericia, where we had also preferred the sea to the city itself, Middelfart continued the same part of the trip — but with the two Little Belt bridges making the landscape much more distinctive.