Trip report : Norway in the truck camper
Well, we had done a lot of stuff in our own country in our truck camper the past couple of years, and a lot of foreign travel in rented campers, so time to get our little camper on a ferry and oversea...
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Saturday - Crossing Denmark
So you have probably noticed that we aren't really stopping to savour these countries - we are racing straight through. The reason is that I have limited time off work, and Norway is the big prize with its fjords and snow. We can return and do some of the intermediate countries in later years.
I probably annoyed Sally in the morning, hassling her to get up even though she knew there wasn't any hurry. The reason was I knew we didn't have a ticket paying for the parking, and I wondered what time they came around and checked. In the end I just moved the camper off the camping area and onto the regular car parking area, and invested €3 in a regular 3-hour parking ticket.
Before heading onward we visited the reason why I detoured to Leboe, since it is slightly off the natural track you would take on either of the two main routes through Denmark. This:
Yes, that is U995 - a WWII U-Boat, pretty much identical to the one portrayed in the German movie and mini-series Das Boot - my favourite war film of all time.
We were standing waiting for the ticket office to open and therefore had the submarine to ourselves at that time in the morning.
It was amazing being inside. I have been in a number of diesel-electric submarines and it was interesting to compare. It was also really spacious - at least when populated by only 2 people and not full of stores and torpedoes :B
It was late morning by the time we left, heading for Denmark.
There are several routes you can take from northern Germany to Norway. You can drive all the way up the western peninsula of Denmark, then get a ferry to one of the Norwegian ports - we had booked one of those ferries, but they cancelled the booking. The other, and quite popular option, is to drive half way up that peninsula, then turn right and join the Great Belt Bridge - a highway that crosses some impressive bridges and a tunnel and heads east for Sweden. Instead I decided to go to Sweden, but take more of a straight-line route using ferries. This would give us a couple of nice ferry crossings and a short city visit.
We headed east and onto a German island jutting out into the Baltic in order to catch a ferry to the islands of Denmark.
I knew already that diesel would become more expensive as I headed north. So I planned to pick some up in Germany before the ferry. We came off the highway looking for a fuel station, but instead found a supermarket where we refilled with food instead. We passed another near the highway, but those are generally more expensive. I thought there would be cheap diesel available near the ferry port, so we kept going. However, when we got to the ferry the road just stopped at the check-in barrier for the ferry. I detoured off to a local village, but there was no diesel there - so I would be heading into a more expensive country with a near empty diesel tank - Doh!
I hadn't booked this ferry on the basis that I didn't know the time I wanted to use it, and might have changed my mind about the route. However, it turned out that it was €100 for this short crossing to Denmark :E
The weather was still holding and we enjoyed the sun on the deck and the glass smooth sea in the 26 celcius warmth:
After leaving the ferry we filled up with diesel - the fuel station was unmanned, but took credit cards. The advantage of stopping at this point was that there is nothing at the southern end of the highway but the ferry terminal - so once I had refuelled the highway was empty as all ferry traffic had now passed.
Denmark is pretty flat:
We stopped for lunch by one of the bridges and I had to change some Danisk Krona at a restaurant to get change to use for the toilet. Sally knocked up a little picnic:
Under the span of the bridge we had just crossed we could see the Great Belt bridge, indicating we were homing in on that highway:
Eventually we joined the great belt highway, then pulled off north rather than taking the bridge to Sweden. We headed for Helsingor at the north east corner of Denmark, and almost spitting distance from Sweden.
This looks like a really nice little city. We dropped in to see the castle - you may remember Shakespeare's Hamlet - it was set here. There was a private function going on in the castle (everyone was turning up in formal attire), so we couldn't visit the inner parts:
I asked Sally if she wanted to find a campground around Helsingor, but she wanted to get into Sweden, so we took a quick look around the old harbour and then returned to the camper:
As we waited for the next ferry (this one cost us €50 for a ferry journey of about 3 miles!) we spotted another vessel crossing through the straights - one of the Cunard liners, maybe the Queen Mary 2.
We headed for the top deck of the ferry, while Swedes stocked up on cheap drink from the on-board shop
Sweden at last:
We saw another truck camper on the ferry - in fact he parked behind us, but didn't seem interested in talking (truck campers are rare on this side of the Atlantic).
Getting off the ferry it was after 7 PM and we headed directly to a location I had marked on the GPS for boondocking (wild camping for those outside of the US) slightly up the Swedish coast. I have a smart-phone app where you can pay and download boondocking locations with reviews and information. This would be the first time we had tried it.
It turned out to be an informal car parking area in some woodland next to a beach. Locals were on the beach, but were slowly leaving; some had horses in horse trailers they were using to ride on the beach. There were also some RVs there, which was a good sign:
It was pretty hot so we sat in the shade on our beach chairs - trying to juggle keeping out of the sun versus keeping away from the giant mosquitoes.
We went for a walk through the woodland and circled back along the beah. The woodland part of the walk turned out to be a mistake as there were mosquitoes everywhere.
Early the next morning was the first indication of a battery problem. We had left the compressor fridge turned up quite high and in the heat it had been running a lot. Early in the morning I heard the telltale sound of the fridge cycling - trying to start, detecting the voltage was too low, shutting down and repeating. I checked the voltage at the battery and it showed that as soon as I turned the fridge on and it started drawing 6 amps the voltage at the battery dropped from 12.8v to 11.9v. I reached down and turned off its 12v supply. Sounds like I need a new battery.
Once the sun was up and on the solar panels there was enough power to run the fridge again.
Stay tuned for the trip through Sweden to Norway...
So you have probably noticed that we aren't really stopping to savour these countries - we are racing straight through. The reason is that I have limited time off work, and Norway is the big prize with its fjords and snow. We can return and do some of the intermediate countries in later years.
I probably annoyed Sally in the morning, hassling her to get up even though she knew there wasn't any hurry. The reason was I knew we didn't have a ticket paying for the parking, and I wondered what time they came around and checked. In the end I just moved the camper off the camping area and onto the regular car parking area, and invested €3 in a regular 3-hour parking ticket.
Before heading onward we visited the reason why I detoured to Leboe, since it is slightly off the natural track you would take on either of the two main routes through Denmark. This:
Yes, that is U995 - a WWII U-Boat, pretty much identical to the one portrayed in the German movie and mini-series Das Boot - my favourite war film of all time.
We were standing waiting for the ticket office to open and therefore had the submarine to ourselves at that time in the morning.
It was amazing being inside. I have been in a number of diesel-electric submarines and it was interesting to compare. It was also really spacious - at least when populated by only 2 people and not full of stores and torpedoes :B
It was late morning by the time we left, heading for Denmark.
There are several routes you can take from northern Germany to Norway. You can drive all the way up the western peninsula of Denmark, then get a ferry to one of the Norwegian ports - we had booked one of those ferries, but they cancelled the booking. The other, and quite popular option, is to drive half way up that peninsula, then turn right and join the Great Belt Bridge - a highway that crosses some impressive bridges and a tunnel and heads east for Sweden. Instead I decided to go to Sweden, but take more of a straight-line route using ferries. This would give us a couple of nice ferry crossings and a short city visit.
We headed east and onto a German island jutting out into the Baltic in order to catch a ferry to the islands of Denmark.
I knew already that diesel would become more expensive as I headed north. So I planned to pick some up in Germany before the ferry. We came off the highway looking for a fuel station, but instead found a supermarket where we refilled with food instead. We passed another near the highway, but those are generally more expensive. I thought there would be cheap diesel available near the ferry port, so we kept going. However, when we got to the ferry the road just stopped at the check-in barrier for the ferry. I detoured off to a local village, but there was no diesel there - so I would be heading into a more expensive country with a near empty diesel tank - Doh!
I hadn't booked this ferry on the basis that I didn't know the time I wanted to use it, and might have changed my mind about the route. However, it turned out that it was €100 for this short crossing to Denmark :E
The weather was still holding and we enjoyed the sun on the deck and the glass smooth sea in the 26 celcius warmth:
After leaving the ferry we filled up with diesel - the fuel station was unmanned, but took credit cards. The advantage of stopping at this point was that there is nothing at the southern end of the highway but the ferry terminal - so once I had refuelled the highway was empty as all ferry traffic had now passed.
Denmark is pretty flat:
We stopped for lunch by one of the bridges and I had to change some Danisk Krona at a restaurant to get change to use for the toilet. Sally knocked up a little picnic:
Under the span of the bridge we had just crossed we could see the Great Belt bridge, indicating we were homing in on that highway:
Eventually we joined the great belt highway, then pulled off north rather than taking the bridge to Sweden. We headed for Helsingor at the north east corner of Denmark, and almost spitting distance from Sweden.
This looks like a really nice little city. We dropped in to see the castle - you may remember Shakespeare's Hamlet - it was set here. There was a private function going on in the castle (everyone was turning up in formal attire), so we couldn't visit the inner parts:
I asked Sally if she wanted to find a campground around Helsingor, but she wanted to get into Sweden, so we took a quick look around the old harbour and then returned to the camper:
As we waited for the next ferry (this one cost us €50 for a ferry journey of about 3 miles!) we spotted another vessel crossing through the straights - one of the Cunard liners, maybe the Queen Mary 2.
We headed for the top deck of the ferry, while Swedes stocked up on cheap drink from the on-board shop
Sweden at last:
We saw another truck camper on the ferry - in fact he parked behind us, but didn't seem interested in talking (truck campers are rare on this side of the Atlantic).
Getting off the ferry it was after 7 PM and we headed directly to a location I had marked on the GPS for boondocking (wild camping for those outside of the US) slightly up the Swedish coast. I have a smart-phone app where you can pay and download boondocking locations with reviews and information. This would be the first time we had tried it.
It turned out to be an informal car parking area in some woodland next to a beach. Locals were on the beach, but were slowly leaving; some had horses in horse trailers they were using to ride on the beach. There were also some RVs there, which was a good sign:
It was pretty hot so we sat in the shade on our beach chairs - trying to juggle keeping out of the sun versus keeping away from the giant mosquitoes.
We went for a walk through the woodland and circled back along the beah. The woodland part of the walk turned out to be a mistake as there were mosquitoes everywhere.
Early the next morning was the first indication of a battery problem. We had left the compressor fridge turned up quite high and in the heat it had been running a lot. Early in the morning I heard the telltale sound of the fridge cycling - trying to start, detecting the voltage was too low, shutting down and repeating. I checked the voltage at the battery and it showed that as soon as I turned the fridge on and it started drawing 6 amps the voltage at the battery dropped from 12.8v to 11.9v. I reached down and turned off its 12v supply. Sounds like I need a new battery.
Once the sun was up and on the solar panels there was enough power to run the fridge again.
Stay tuned for the trip through Sweden to Norway...
