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 - Returning to Denmark
A nice place to wake up to:
I chose last night's campground because it was close to another nice coastal town - Risor.
We managed to park right in the middle of town facing the harbour, in a regular car parking space - an advantage of the compact truck camper compared to a regular class C.
On the way in we past some cafes and Sally pointed out that we should really treat ourselves to at least a coffee since we had been eating in our camper or having picnics every meal up to now. So we found a nice cafe and had a very naughty hot chocolate each, and I had a nice cake (Sally had to just watch me eat cake as she is allergic to gluten, and has learned that the brief treat was not worth the time spent in pain or in the bathroom).
You can probably just about see our camper in the background:
It was time to head to the ferry port. Like Harwich in England it is just a small town with a port for a large ferry. There wasn't much to do in the ferry port - just hang around the car park. Sally found the freight office and went hunting for souvenirs:
Inevitably the portapotty ended up acquiring one of these souvenirs:
We also got to admire some other vehicles - nice artwork - we were mentally ticking off the places we had been to:
At last the ferry arrives:
Interestingly it had a gantry crane that slid out from the top deck and picked up some quarter-size shipping containers, which it then lowered down through a deck hatch into the hold.
Driving onto the car deck:
It is a very nice ferry with a lot of facilities:
The crossing to Denmark is 4.5 hours, so I took the opportunity of walking around every deck of the ship. It had several decks of cabins and a large cleaning staff were working hard preparing them for the return journey. I assume they do a short daytime journey in one direction, then a slower overnight journey in the other direction. Some of the cabins were very nice - full size double beds, like a proper hotel room.
With little else to do (other than spend money or eat) we found somewhere to sit in the sun on the front of the top deck:
We did go down to the tax-free shop and bought a couple of bottles of wine and some chocolate. It still seemed quite expensive (the cheapest wine was around £10 per bottle).
On returning to the camper we found that the car deck was half empty. We wondered why yesterday's ferry was full, when this one clearly wasn't:
We drove off the ferry into Denmark. Straight off onto the highway - no checks, but then Norway is in the Schengen zone, so passports are not needed to travel from between Norway and Denmark or Sweden.
A mile out of port we passed a big broad beach on the left which was full of RVs. This is clearly where people went for free camping. However, it was extremely windy and although I thought it might be cool to drive onto the beach and camp, Sally was very opposed, on the basis that in that wind sand was going to get everywhere.
So we drove 5 miles south to a boondocking location I had previously identified using the smartphone app. It turned out to be a beach carpark next to a grocery shop and restaurant. It was getting late and given the wind no-one was using the beach, and a few RVs had turned up already:
We went and did a load of shopping at the grocery shop. The old woman running it was lovely and of course spoke perfect English. We felt that we had at least supported the local community while parking there. Annoyingly I bought some similar South African wine as I bought on the ship, but at half the price :S
We went for a quick walk on the beach but it was too windy and pretty cold, so we didn't go far:
We returned to the camper and I enjoyed some of my Danish purchases:
Sally was right about parking here and not on the beach - there was a big sand dune protecting us
Stay tuned for our travel back through Denmark and Germany...
A nice place to wake up to:
I chose last night's campground because it was close to another nice coastal town - Risor.
We managed to park right in the middle of town facing the harbour, in a regular car parking space - an advantage of the compact truck camper compared to a regular class C.
On the way in we past some cafes and Sally pointed out that we should really treat ourselves to at least a coffee since we had been eating in our camper or having picnics every meal up to now. So we found a nice cafe and had a very naughty hot chocolate each, and I had a nice cake (Sally had to just watch me eat cake as she is allergic to gluten, and has learned that the brief treat was not worth the time spent in pain or in the bathroom).
You can probably just about see our camper in the background:
It was time to head to the ferry port. Like Harwich in England it is just a small town with a port for a large ferry. There wasn't much to do in the ferry port - just hang around the car park. Sally found the freight office and went hunting for souvenirs:
Inevitably the portapotty ended up acquiring one of these souvenirs:
We also got to admire some other vehicles - nice artwork - we were mentally ticking off the places we had been to:
At last the ferry arrives:
Interestingly it had a gantry crane that slid out from the top deck and picked up some quarter-size shipping containers, which it then lowered down through a deck hatch into the hold.
Driving onto the car deck:
It is a very nice ferry with a lot of facilities:
The crossing to Denmark is 4.5 hours, so I took the opportunity of walking around every deck of the ship. It had several decks of cabins and a large cleaning staff were working hard preparing them for the return journey. I assume they do a short daytime journey in one direction, then a slower overnight journey in the other direction. Some of the cabins were very nice - full size double beds, like a proper hotel room.
With little else to do (other than spend money or eat) we found somewhere to sit in the sun on the front of the top deck:
We did go down to the tax-free shop and bought a couple of bottles of wine and some chocolate. It still seemed quite expensive (the cheapest wine was around £10 per bottle).
On returning to the camper we found that the car deck was half empty. We wondered why yesterday's ferry was full, when this one clearly wasn't:
We drove off the ferry into Denmark. Straight off onto the highway - no checks, but then Norway is in the Schengen zone, so passports are not needed to travel from between Norway and Denmark or Sweden.
A mile out of port we passed a big broad beach on the left which was full of RVs. This is clearly where people went for free camping. However, it was extremely windy and although I thought it might be cool to drive onto the beach and camp, Sally was very opposed, on the basis that in that wind sand was going to get everywhere.
So we drove 5 miles south to a boondocking location I had previously identified using the smartphone app. It turned out to be a beach carpark next to a grocery shop and restaurant. It was getting late and given the wind no-one was using the beach, and a few RVs had turned up already:
We went and did a load of shopping at the grocery shop. The old woman running it was lovely and of course spoke perfect English. We felt that we had at least supported the local community while parking there. Annoyingly I bought some similar South African wine as I bought on the ship, but at half the price :S
We went for a quick walk on the beach but it was too windy and pretty cold, so we didn't go far:
We returned to the camper and I enjoyed some of my Danish purchases:
Sally was right about parking here and not on the beach - there was a big sand dune protecting us
Stay tuned for our travel back through Denmark and Germany...
