60 mThe route goes from Stemmeværkspladsen into the thicket along Ansager Å, where the path quickly becomes narrower and more down-to-earth. Here the river valley is not smoothed out into a park: the ground can be soft, the forest floor damp, and the water lies close to your feet in several places.
It is a short walk, but it feels bigger than its length. The path alternates between open views over meadow and narrow stretches beneath low oak trees, where the branches stand gnarled and multi-stemmed above the path.
The oak thicket is not just wild nature. Such thickets can be shaped by poor soil, moisture, wind, grazing, coppicing, and logging over a long time. That is why the trees look almost like an enchanted forest, but their form also points to an old cultural landscape, where forest, meadow, and stream were used practically.
Along the route, small traces of water and meadow use lie close to nature. This gives the walk a special tone: you do not pass large structures, but move through a landscape where the use of the water can still be sensed in the terrain.
Hansen's Bridge is the route's turning point and is named after the farmer on a nearby farm. From here the walk returns toward Stemmeværkspladsen, while the thicket closes in again around the narrow path.
The information house at Stemmeværkspladsen is the route’s small antechamber: here you can learn about nature, the former Ansager Canal, and the weir station that sent water on to Karlsgårde Power Plant.
The path itself starts a few metres to the left of the building and leads into old oak scrub. In spring, the start is covered with a white carpet of anemones before the narrow route continues toward the river valley.
About 2 km west of Ansager, Ansager Å and Grindsted Å join together. From this point, the water continues as Varde Å, so the site is a small change of name in the landscape rather than a major structure.
Ansager Å has wound its way about 20 km here from the area southwest of Billund. At the confluence, the local valley is connected to Varde Å’s longer course toward the west and the Wadden Sea.
Along the stream stands the old oak scrub, low, twisted and multi-stemmed. It may look like pure fairy-tale forest, but its form can also reveal poor soil, wind, frost, earlier cutting or grazing.
The scrub lies in the river valley by Stemmeværkspladsen, where Ansager Stream and Grindsted Stream meet and become Varde Stream. Here nature has not been smoothed out; the trees bear the conditions in their branches.
The footbridges carry the trail across the wettest stretches in the river valley, where meadow, low-lying ground and watercourse lie close together. Normally you can get through without rubber boots, but when the water level is very high, the walk can still be difficult.
Stay on the trail: the soft ground cannot handle many extra tracks. Along the route, you can in several places make out remains of old irrigation channels, where water from the stream was once used to water the meadow during dry periods.
Kanal Road leads back toward the intake structure, where the Varde River lies at the end of the road. The place is closely linked to the former Ansager Canal, which from 1945 carried a large part of the water onward toward Karlsgårde.
After the EU LIFE project in 2010, more water was returned to the natural course of the Varde River. The road got new asphalt in 2012, after heavy excavators had used it as an access road to the river valley. Over the verge and the open countryside, the common buzzard is often seen hunting.
