No Flights, No Rush: Three Gloriously Slow Routes From the UK to Denmark

Somewhere along the way, British travellers agreed to a strange deal: we'll endure two hours of airport theatre — the liquids, the queues, the gate announced at the far end of a shopping centre — in exchange for arriving quickly. We call this efficiency. Danes, who are not a sentimental people but are a practical one, have quietly declined the deal.

In Scandinavia, the long way round isn't a hardship; it's a genre. Overnight ferries with proper restaurants. Regional trains that stop at towns you'd never otherwise meet. The journey isn't the tax you pay for the holiday — the journey is the holiday, or at least its excellent opening act.

Here are three 'deliberately inconvenient' routes from the UK to Denmark, none involving a plane, each one better than the flight it replaces.

Route one: the classic — London to Copenhagen by rail and sea

The grand old route, and still the best. Start with a morning departure from London King's Cross (or better, start from your own regional station and make a night of it in London). Trains via the Eurostar and through Belgium and Germany carry you across the continent in comfortable, Wi-Fi-equipped stages — London to Cologne, Cologne to Hamburg, with an overnight stop in either city if you like your travel civilised rather than heroic.

Then comes the highlight: the train aboard the ferry. At Puttgarden, the German train rolls directly onto a ferry bound for Rødby in Denmark. You cross the Fehmarn Belt standing on deck with the wind in your face, watching Denmark assemble itself on the horizon — first the wind turbines, then the flat green coastline, then the little summer houses. Forty-five minutes of sea air that no airport lounge has ever provided. From Rødby, it's a straightforward train ride into Copenhagen, arriving in time for dinner.

The rhythm: two days, one overnight stop, zero stress. Why it works: the ferry moment — train on boat, wind on deck — is the kind of travel memory Brits usually pay extra for on a cruise.

Route two: the northern loop — via Hamburg and the Jutland coast

For those who like their journeys to have a plot, route your trip through western Denmark instead. London to Hamburg as above — or take the overnight sleeper from Brussels or Amsterdam to save a hotel night — then catch the train north through Germany to Fredericia, crossing into Jutland as the landscape turns to heath and coast.

From Fredericia, branch to Aarhus, Denmark's gloriously underrated second city: a harbour town with an art museum that houses a rainbow walkway you walk through the sky, and enough cafés to justify the £4-coffee habit. Then, the deliberately inconvenient bit: the ferry from Aarhus across to Sjællands Odde and onward to Copenhagen, or the slow coastal train up through northern Jutland if you've time to linger among the dunes and fishing villages.

The rhythm: three days minimum, ideally four. Why it works: you arrive in Copenhagen having already seen Denmark — the farms, the coast, the towns — instead of dropping onto it from above with no idea what's in between.

Route three: the full voyage — Harwich or Newcastle to the continent, then overland

If the thought of the London commute-before-the-commute puts you off, start your journey at the seaside. The ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland is a British institution: an overnight or evening sailing with a cabin, a proper dinner onboard, and the small magic of going to sleep in one country and waking in another.

Alternatively, sail from Newcastle to Amsterdam — a genuinely enjoyable crossing with sea views, live entertainment and a bar with opinions. From either port, the Dutch and German rail network sweeps you east: Amsterdam to Hamburg, Hamburg north to Denmark. Add a stop in Hamburg's Speicherstadt or a night in Odense — Hans Christian Andersen's hometown, and a proper town rather than a tourist set — and the trip acquires chapters.

The rhythm: three to four days, ferries doing the sleeping. Why it works: you eliminate flights and hotel nights in one move, and you start relaxing the moment you board rather than the moment you clear security.

The case for the inconvenient route

None of this is fast. That's the feature. The flight from London to Copenhagen is roughly two hours of compressed misery; the overland version is a day and a half of decompression — and anyone who's arrived at a holiday straight from a packed Gatwick departure gate knows which traveller is actually resting by day two.

There are practical bonuses too. Flight-free travel carries a fraction of the carbon, which matters to anyone who travels often enough to feel awkward about it. You can pack properly — bring the good coat, the extra book, the bottle of something for the hosts — without weighing a suitcase. And you see the connecting tissue of Europe: the Rhine, the heath, the crossing, the little stations where the train pauses and nobody gets on.

Mostly, though, slow routes change what a trip is. A flight makes Denmark a destination. The ferry-and-rail route makes it a journey with a beginning you remember. And when you finally roll into Copenhagen — on foot from the central station, past the bicycles and the bakeries, tired in the good way — you've already been travelling for two days.

You'll never look at a boarding pass the same way again.