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 overseas once again.
Sally had been pestering me for years about doing Scandinavia - not helped by Nolan, who owned the camper many years ago leaving Norway stickers on the back which taunted here every time she returned to the camper. I must say I fancied somewhere warm, so going to > 60 degrees north, even in June, was worrying me.
It is quite a lot of driving too - we did nearly 4000 miles in two and a half weeks.
Living in England, the first step is getting across the channel to mainland Europe. There used to be direct car ferries to Norway and Denmark, but only freight ferries operate now and are less convenient. The obvious route is Dover to Calais in France via a ferry or the Channel tunnel, because it is the shortest sea crossing, though it adds more miles of driving. I decided upon a different route that cost a bit more but was time-efficient and added to the experience - taking the overnight ferry from Harwich, north east of London, to the Hook of Holland, near The Hague. This has the advantage that for only £276 return I was able to do a days work, pick up the ferry at 11 PM, go to bed in an outside cabin, and wake up in Holland ready to do a big drive that day, effectively the first day of our vacation would start in Holland :)
Thursday - Getting the first ferry
When not at a customer site I work from home, and tend to work an early shift compatible with my customers in countries to the east of me. So the plan was to start work at 05:00 as usual and then drive to Harwich in the afternoon. However, things didn't work out like that. A customer in Texas needed my help and so I needed to spend a couple of hours on the phone with them with my computer dialied up to see what they were having a problem with. Being in Texas that presented a problem due to time zones. I couldn't take the call AND drive to the ferry. But the solution was suddenly obvious. I have a truck camper - a mobile office. I can work anywhere I can get a 3G cell phone connection. The next question was one of battery power. Would my laptop survive for that long? So I put together a few bits and pieces from the garage and made my little box of electricity:
An old Optima battery previously on my Jeep and waiting for another application, my spare intelligent battery charger and a 300w modified sine-wave inverter.
This would allow me to run a laptop without draining the camper's built in battery - I could then recharge it whenever I was at a campsite with hook-up.
I made a simple lid out of some ply I had used for a previous camper repair and loaded the box behind the passenger seat of the truck:
So we had a nice run up to the port of Harwich on the coast around lunch time, avoiding the rush hour traffic inevitable on London's orbital M25 motorway.
On arrival we located the ferry port, then drove to the adjacent town and found a nice spot to park by the coast. We then checked the cell phone coverage before having a look around town.
It is actually an interesting little town. It has two light houses - a tall one and the small one in the background below (behind the historic bathing huts):
These two lined up to form a 'leading light' to lead the boats into the harbour. Unfortunately part of the harbour silted up and the lighthouses were given the nickname of 'misleading lights' for their habit of drawing ships onto the sand bar.
Before the seawall was built the shore was further back - this crane unloaded boats:
The odd thing about this is that it was powered by a human tread wheel. It had no brake so could be dangerous.
There was also a disused light ship docked and a more modern automatic one in the channel behind:
As you can see the weather wasn't particularly summery and it was soon time to return to the warmth of the camper and power up my computer for the call with Texas. I dragged an extension lead around from the inverter in the truck cab to the camper. Sally decided to sit in the comfortable truck passenger seat and read her Cathy Reichs book and I have her instructions to turn on the inverter when I knocked on the cab via the passthrough window.
All went well until the battery on the laptop got low towards the end of the call. I knocked on the cab, but nothing happened. I knocked again, but still no power. Fortunately the battery in the laptop lasted until the end of the call, but I was frustrated by the failure. Further investigation showed the problem was nothing to do with my box of electricity - but was in fact a fault with the old laptop power supply I had used - one from a previous computer that I decided could live in the camper.
After the call we went out to find some food. We had a drink in a nice pub by the harbour, then found a traditional fish and chips shop and went to sit by the sea front and eat our meal in the traditional (chilly) way:
After a while we spotted our ferry coming in - this signalled that it was probably a good time to return to the ferry terminal:
The check-in process was really easy - they just asked for our passports, their computer brought up the details and they handed over the information booklet for the ferry and a pair of disposable electronic room keys for our room in the middle of deck 10, starboard side.
It took ages for them to unload all the trucks and trailers. Some trailers are loaded unattended - i.e. without the tractor units - a new tractor unit collects them in Holland. Finally we loaded. Conveniently they had loaded the trucks on the other 3 decks so the cars and RVs could go on the main deck which involved less manoeuvring - drive on / drive off:
Because it was after 10 PM we headed straight up to our cabin. There was a lot of driving required the next day, so we wanted to get our heads down straight away - and also have a shower while the ship was still in port and level.
The room was advertised as a twin room with bunk beds. I envisaged something pretty tiny with a tiny port hole - I was pleasantly surprised. The lower bunk was a small double bed, meaning we could sleep together rather than using separate bunks and the port hole was huge.
The bathroom was good too:
Eventually the ship moved off. The crossing was very smooth, although it was pretty early in the morning before all the children had stopped running up and down the gangways and people had returned from the bar.
Stay tuned for our journey from the North sea to the Baltic sea...
Sally had been pestering me for years about doing Scandinavia - not helped by Nolan, who owned the camper many years ago leaving Norway stickers on the back which taunted here every time she returned to the camper. I must say I fancied somewhere warm, so going to > 60 degrees north, even in June, was worrying me.
It is quite a lot of driving too - we did nearly 4000 miles in two and a half weeks.
Living in England, the first step is getting across the channel to mainland Europe. There used to be direct car ferries to Norway and Denmark, but only freight ferries operate now and are less convenient. The obvious route is Dover to Calais in France via a ferry or the Channel tunnel, because it is the shortest sea crossing, though it adds more miles of driving. I decided upon a different route that cost a bit more but was time-efficient and added to the experience - taking the overnight ferry from Harwich, north east of London, to the Hook of Holland, near The Hague. This has the advantage that for only £276 return I was able to do a days work, pick up the ferry at 11 PM, go to bed in an outside cabin, and wake up in Holland ready to do a big drive that day, effectively the first day of our vacation would start in Holland :)
Thursday - Getting the first ferry
When not at a customer site I work from home, and tend to work an early shift compatible with my customers in countries to the east of me. So the plan was to start work at 05:00 as usual and then drive to Harwich in the afternoon. However, things didn't work out like that. A customer in Texas needed my help and so I needed to spend a couple of hours on the phone with them with my computer dialied up to see what they were having a problem with. Being in Texas that presented a problem due to time zones. I couldn't take the call AND drive to the ferry. But the solution was suddenly obvious. I have a truck camper - a mobile office. I can work anywhere I can get a 3G cell phone connection. The next question was one of battery power. Would my laptop survive for that long? So I put together a few bits and pieces from the garage and made my little box of electricity:
An old Optima battery previously on my Jeep and waiting for another application, my spare intelligent battery charger and a 300w modified sine-wave inverter.
This would allow me to run a laptop without draining the camper's built in battery - I could then recharge it whenever I was at a campsite with hook-up.
I made a simple lid out of some ply I had used for a previous camper repair and loaded the box behind the passenger seat of the truck:
So we had a nice run up to the port of Harwich on the coast around lunch time, avoiding the rush hour traffic inevitable on London's orbital M25 motorway.
On arrival we located the ferry port, then drove to the adjacent town and found a nice spot to park by the coast. We then checked the cell phone coverage before having a look around town.
It is actually an interesting little town. It has two light houses - a tall one and the small one in the background below (behind the historic bathing huts):
These two lined up to form a 'leading light' to lead the boats into the harbour. Unfortunately part of the harbour silted up and the lighthouses were given the nickname of 'misleading lights' for their habit of drawing ships onto the sand bar.
Before the seawall was built the shore was further back - this crane unloaded boats:
The odd thing about this is that it was powered by a human tread wheel. It had no brake so could be dangerous.
There was also a disused light ship docked and a more modern automatic one in the channel behind:
As you can see the weather wasn't particularly summery and it was soon time to return to the warmth of the camper and power up my computer for the call with Texas. I dragged an extension lead around from the inverter in the truck cab to the camper. Sally decided to sit in the comfortable truck passenger seat and read her Cathy Reichs book and I have her instructions to turn on the inverter when I knocked on the cab via the passthrough window.
All went well until the battery on the laptop got low towards the end of the call. I knocked on the cab, but nothing happened. I knocked again, but still no power. Fortunately the battery in the laptop lasted until the end of the call, but I was frustrated by the failure. Further investigation showed the problem was nothing to do with my box of electricity - but was in fact a fault with the old laptop power supply I had used - one from a previous computer that I decided could live in the camper.
After the call we went out to find some food. We had a drink in a nice pub by the harbour, then found a traditional fish and chips shop and went to sit by the sea front and eat our meal in the traditional (chilly) way:
After a while we spotted our ferry coming in - this signalled that it was probably a good time to return to the ferry terminal:
The check-in process was really easy - they just asked for our passports, their computer brought up the details and they handed over the information booklet for the ferry and a pair of disposable electronic room keys for our room in the middle of deck 10, starboard side.
It took ages for them to unload all the trucks and trailers. Some trailers are loaded unattended - i.e. without the tractor units - a new tractor unit collects them in Holland. Finally we loaded. Conveniently they had loaded the trucks on the other 3 decks so the cars and RVs could go on the main deck which involved less manoeuvring - drive on / drive off:
Because it was after 10 PM we headed straight up to our cabin. There was a lot of driving required the next day, so we wanted to get our heads down straight away - and also have a shower while the ship was still in port and level.
The room was advertised as a twin room with bunk beds. I envisaged something pretty tiny with a tiny port hole - I was pleasantly surprised. The lower bunk was a small double bed, meaning we could sleep together rather than using separate bunks and the port hole was huge.
The bathroom was good too:
Eventually the ship moved off. The crossing was very smooth, although it was pretty early in the morning before all the children had stopped running up and down the gangways and people had returned from the bar.
Stay tuned for our journey from the North sea to the Baltic sea...
