We returned to Vejle about a month after our first visit in July. This time it was part of the journey south from Horsens towards Fredericia, so we already knew roughly what to expect and did not need to spend half the visit working out where everything was.
Our first experience of Vejle had been rather mixed. We had tried several places around the city, including the marina and the wooded area around Helligkildevej. The latter had been spacious enough for our 23-foot motorhome and completely shaded, but extremely uneven and a little noisy. At the marina, the motorhome facilities should have been one of the main advantages, but the grey-water disposal platform was unusable when we were there in the middle of July because it had been blocked by stored materials. We had also looked at Vejle City Camping: a reasonable campsite beside the forest, with good walking possibilities and a deer park nearby, but noisy because of the road and, at 529 DKK for one night without electricity, very expensive for what we needed.
Coming back for the second time therefore felt quite different. Vejle was no longer somewhere we were trying to work out from scratch. We already knew the unusual geography of the place: a town squeezed between steep wooded hills at the end of a long fjord, with the older centre inland and a much newer waterfront stretching towards the harbour.
On this second passage we also stopped around Gammel Sving. The parking there is basically a roadside rest area rather than a destination: there are benches and bins, the whole area is slightly sloping, and the official description gives a maximum stay of eight hours. Traffic on the road is noticeable during the day, although it becomes much quieter at night. Our review from this second visit is one of the Vejle stops recorded immediately after Horsens and before we continued to Fredericia.
Vejle itself is more interesting than its fairly ordinary town centre initially suggests. Its name comes from the old Danish word for a ford, which makes sense once you look at the geography. The first settlement developed where the Grejs and Vejle rivers meet before reaching the fjord. Vejle is first mentioned in writing in 1256, although archaeological evidence shows settlement here by about 1100, and it received market-town privileges in 1327.
The waterfront is still the part that makes Vejle stand out. Bølgen — The Wave consists of five wave-shaped residential buildings directly beside the fjord. The first two were completed in 2009 before construction was interrupted by the financial crisis. Nearby is Fjordenhus, Olafur Eliasson’s first completed architectural work, opened in 2018. It rises directly from the water on four connected cylindrical structures, and the ground floor is publicly accessible during opening hours.
That contrast between the landscape and the newer architecture is probably what gives Vejle its identity. The centre itself did not suddenly become one of our favourite Danish old towns on the second visit, but the combination of fjord, steep wooded slopes, marina and modern waterfront is distinctive enough that returning did not feel pointless.
Our second stop was also easier simply because we knew the city. On the first visit we had spent much more time checking parking places, the marina, the service area and possible places to stay; this time Vejle was a familiar point on the route rather than an unknown destination. We stopped, saw another side of the area and then continued south towards Fredericia. In that sense, the second visit was probably a better representation of how Vejle fits into this trip: not somewhere we needed to spend several days, but a city worth coming back through rather than bypassing on the motorway.