We reached Nyborg on 18 August and ended up checking more possible stops here than in most towns on Funen. The harbour, old centre, beaches and Great Belt Bridge are all fairly close together, but the different parking options vary considerably in how useful they are with a motorhome.
One place that worked particularly well for us was Havnepromenaden. We stayed there during the day and had no problems with our 23-foot motorhome. The pitches were not especially large, but they were wide enough for us. There are only twelve of them, so the area can fill quickly, although in mid season we found it very quiet and peaceful and felt safe leaving the motorhome there. We did not need to use the services, but they appeared clean. For our daytime stay we were not charged anything.
We also checked Vesterhavnen, a paved parking area shared with cars and conveniently placed for walking into Nyborg. It is a parking place rather than a campsite, so camping behaviour is prohibited, but its central location makes it useful if the main purpose is visiting the town rather than spending the day outside the motorhome.
Around Nyborg we went on to check several other possibilities, including Sommerbyen, Griffensund, Hjejlevej, Dyrehavevej and Østerøvej. The number of options is useful, but it is also a good example of why we normally check places individually rather than assuming that every coastal parking area will work equally well.
The clearest example was Nyborg Strandcamping. The location and facilities may suit some travellers, but we did not find it suitable for staying because of the noise from the nearby motorway. The setting by the coast looked promising, but for us the constant traffic was enough to rule it out.
Nyborg itself is much more historically important than its size suggests. Nyborg Castle was established around the end of the twelfth century to help control the Great Belt, one of the most important transport routes through the Danish kingdom. Together with fortifications at Korsør and on Sprogø, it allowed the Crown to control movement between Funen and Zealand.
The castle later became one of the main political meeting places of medieval Denmark. The Danehof, an assembly involving the king and the most powerful groups in the kingdom, met here repeatedly from the thirteenth century until 1413. In 1282, King Eric V agreed to a charter at Nyborg that is often described as Denmark’s first constitution. Nyborg therefore has a much stronger connection with the development of Danish government than the modern town initially makes obvious.
Its royal importance continued later. In 1525, Nyborg was designated a permanent royal residence, and after the Reformation Christian III expanded both the castle and the surrounding town. The large square in front of the castle was part of this redesign and was intended to provide a suitably impressive setting for royal ceremonies and tournaments.
The other part of Nyborg’s history is transport. For centuries, travelling between Funen and Zealand meant crossing the Great Belt by boat. Nyborg developed into one of Denmark’s main ferry towns, eventually handling railway ferries and car ferries on the route to Korsør. A dedicated car-ferry harbour opened in 1930, and the ferry infrastructure continued expanding until the fixed link made it unnecessary.
That changed completely with the Great Belt fixed link. Railway traffic began using it in 1997 and the motorway followed in 1998. The connection consists of bridges and an underwater railway tunnel and stretches for roughly 18 kilometres between Funen and Zealand. From Nyborg, the bridge is not simply something in the distance: several roads and parking areas around Hjejlevej and Knudshoved bring you very close to the structure.
This makes Nyborg unusually easy to understand as a town shaped by one geographical problem. Medieval kings built a castle here because the Great Belt had to be controlled. Ferries later turned Nyborg into a major transport hub because the water had to be crossed. The bridge then removed the ferry traffic but kept Nyborg on the same major east-west route.
For us, the practical side of the visit was fairly straightforward once we found the right place. Havnepromenaden was the best of the central options we actually used, while the campsite by the motorway was not suitable for us because of the noise. The rest of the visit was much more about the castle, harbour and the Great Belt itself than about finding a scenic overnight pitch.
Nyborg was therefore one of the more interesting stops on Funen, not because it is a particularly large city, but because so much Danish history is concentrated in a small area: a medieval royal castle, the Danehof, centuries of ferry traffic and one of the country’s biggest modern engineering projects.