The last Blog - Journey's end

Our Journey’s End – plus a few statistics and some Camper van factoids.

On the Esbjerg to Harwich ferry we opened a bottle of Prosecco we had been carrying around in the van for the past 4 weeks, sat on the floor of our rather bizarre 6 berth cabin, and took turns at recalling our best bits from our 13 weeks away.

Hungary  - Cycling on the river levee cycle paths in the evening sun;  Faroe Isles - Mykines and the puffins; Romania - sitting on back of the Danube ferry going to the mouth of the river in the hot sun;  Romania – the painted decorative graveyard and camping alone in the field in the Maramores; Austria – wild camping in the Alps; Iceland – all of it; Greece – chilling out on the hot beaches; Albania – its difference from the rest of Europe; Norway  - Eddie and Claire’s, diving and kayaking on the fjord, walking up to Pulpit rock; Croatia – the house, pool and being with mum and dad; Romania – a proper steam train in the mountains; Czech – camping in Prague......

However the very best part of it all has been being able to spend so much proper time with Susan and Charlie and then later with Katie and Jack and in doing so enjoy so many different places and experiences.

20% of the blog is about enabling our families to track where we are, the rest is pretty selfish and is about capturing all the special times we have had forever. Charlie is only 4 and the reality is that in 10 years he will have forgotten 99% + of what we did, the blog he may well look at when he is older, I know we will. Katie will no doubt be off to Uni in a few weeks and so to get a month away with her has been fantastic as it has with Jack although I have missed Tom not being able to make it as I know if he would have loved it - he was in Iceland working at a Festival in June and loved the country.

May 9th, 2014

August 7th, 2014 - 8330 miles later

We have pretty much stuck to our loose plan. The van has been phenomenal. 8300 miles and it has not required a drop of oil or a top up of the radiator water. One new tyre, no breakdowns and nothing failed...I took it places I wouldn't dream of taking my other cars and I am pretty much certain it has survived better than they would have on a similar trip. It may well need some cash spent on the suspension but that's a small price to pay for the service it has provided. Even the cooking gas was burning strong on the very last day of the trip.

Thanks to those who commented on the blog, it was at times a pain in the arse to write but I am glad I stuck at it.

Thank you Susan for 'just going with it' time and time again...I love you x

Journey:-

13,446 Km ( about 8300 miles) on land

4,300 Km on ferries

21 countries visited ( 90 nights)

Holland (0), Germany (4) , Czech (2), Poland( 3), Slovakia (2), Hungary (2), Romania (10), Bulgaria (2), Turkey (2), Greece (6), Albania (4), Montenegro(6), Croatia (10), Bosnia (0), Italy (0), Slovenia (4), Austria (1), Denmark (4), Norway (5), Iceland (14), Faroes (3)....Ferries (6)

 1332 litres of fuel at a total cost of £1720 which means the Van does  exactly 10 Km/litre – approx 27 miles to the gallon.

Van driven on 69 days of the 91 and fuelled at 53 different garages

Longest journey in a day  - 1099 Km  - South Germany to Denmark

Accommodation

 90 nights away from home

-          54 in the Van

-          6 on ferries

-          4 at friends  - ( Noway)

-          9 in Hotels – (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria)

-          17 in self catering – ( Montenegro, Croatia, Iceland)

Cheapest accommodation – Wild camping

Camping costs from £7 Romania to £65 Denmark

Van factoids

For those who do a lot of camping you will fully understand that one of the best bits about having a camper van is the fridge – cold wine, beer, decent food, butter that looks like butter. It’s so damn clever it works off a 12V battery such that when you are stopped it still produces the goods.

So the little van has an extra ( leisure) battery ( to the normal car battery) such that the fridge doesn’t keep churning out ice cold tasty beverages whilst quietly robbing the starter motor of any electrical power to turn it over to get the engine going. This leisure battery also powers 4 internal lights at the back of the van and that is all it does however in a stinking hot country the poor fridge is flat out and 24 hours just about drains the battery. The clever camper van people thought about that such that we plug our electrical umbilical cable in at camp sites – this gives us 240 V ac to 2 standard double sockets and also a charger unit that keeps the leisure battery ( and more importantly the fridge) going indefinitely.

The van also has a tap and sink served from a 15 litre tank, a 2 ring stove and a grill. It also has a portaloo cunningly hidden in a removable box piece of furniture that doubles up as a double seat to enable 4 to sit comfortably in the back and also serves as our outside table. It is blessed with curtains all round the rear of the van and each night we attach blackout thermal covers to the inside of the windscreen and driver and passenger windows to darken the area Charlie sleeps in.

all in all ...a great little van..

mmaculatley ~8000 Ft) was the high

Day 88 to 91 Ferry Back to Denmark, a night in a Danish camp ’resort’, another ferry to the UK and then the M6 home

Day 88 to 91 Ferry Back to Denmark, a night in a Danish camp ’resort’, another ferry to the UK and then the M6 home

Day88

Getting on the ferry at 11:30 pm Sunday evening means 2 nights and a full day on the ferry before we arrive in Hirtshalls in Denmark on Tuesday morning – we haven’t seen a shower in 3 days and we are running low on clean clothes so the cabin is a welcome sight.

Sumburgh Head, Sheltand Isles from the Ferry

None of us wake until 11:00 am the next morning and we spend the day doing not a lot. The sun is up so we sit outside on deck for a while, play cards, read, write blog and eat and drink.

Jack being socially unacceptable in a confined space

Jack has run out of long trousers so uses his ingenuity to turn Susan's North Face body warmer into upper leg warmers - albeit they do look more like a large nappy.

Day 89

It is our 4^th time in Hirtshalls port in as many weeks and we drive off the ferry past the landrovers and campervans queuing to board our ferry to start their holidays in Iceland. The weather is warm again and we are overdressed for it as we head southwards for a 1 night stop over before getting the ferry back tomorrow to the UK.

Charlie  - watching the action

We stop at a campsite on the Baltic coast with swimming pool, rapids, slides, saunas and hot tub, playparks and little tractors taking holiday makers for rides around the site. It’s full of Danes and it is a nice spot but it’s all a bit sanitised and ‘Truman’ showish after where we have just been....put another way, you wouldn't choose to go on holiday there.

Day 90

The van's final ferry journey

It’s a hot day and ironically for our last day away Jack gets sun burnt. We do not need to leave until 3 pm and so we spend the day in the pool before driving the 100 Km over from the east to the west coast to catch the 18:45 ferry from Esbjerg back to Harwich.

The ferry is a third the size of the Iceland one and as we leave the car deck we are bizarrely greeted by a person encased in a large fluffy pirate suit. Later that evening we are having tea in the bar when ‘Jack the Pirate’ enters the bar with a string of children behind him having just completed the ship’s treasure hunt. He’s a Dane, under 5’ tall and comes with a 70’s moustache. He hands out prizes to some quiz he has just run and then with a sound system that should have been binned in the last millennia he moves seamlessly into a limbo dancing competition. He tries valiantly to whip up a party atmosphere but the music continues to jump or just not work at all and it’s all pretty pitiful. A mum’s and dad’s limbo dancing competition is the finale and Susan and Katie get up, as does a press ganged Ulrich ( 6’5” and 250Lb Dane) and another reluctant father. The ‘congo’ music burps out, Jack the pirate struggles with setting his limbo bar, half the parents look like they would rather be anywhere else on the planet and my Jack and I laugh like drains.....it is proper entertainment. Lurking in the mist of parents is a mother who clearly  limbo dances nightly, we should have spotted this earlier when she was doing her pre competition lunges and stretches. Ulrich exits early and it is between Katie and the ‘limbo’ dancer at the end but is the semi-professional who is always going to take the podium.....she gets the choice of ‘Stella’ or a ‘Jack the Pirate’....she goes for ‘Stella’ but it is not an ice cold tasty beverage but a boxed poor imitation of a Barbie doll.

However back in the cabin there is some consolation for Katie as she takes the ‘Gin Rummy’ holiday competition...although she still cries herself to sleep J

Day 91

It's a really crap journey up from Harwich back to our home. 530 Km, or now we are back in the UK 325 miles, on the most crowded roads we have seen in the whole of Europe over our 3 months away. The M6 is stop start all the way up from Birmingham to Wigan; the van is noisy because my foot is to the floor, the windows are open because it is warm and Susan and I are both thinking about going back to work. The day was always going to come but it is now here.

Day 88 Faroes to Iceland ferry

Day 89 HIrtshalls ( Dk) to Frederica (Dk)   271 Km      Total 12807 Km

Day 90 Frederica (Dk) to Esbjerg (Dk)       108 Km     Total 12916 Km

Day 91 Harwich ( UK) to Holme ( UK)         530 Km     Total 13446 Km

Day 87 - Faroes - day 3 - Mykines - the best day ever

Day 87   - Mykines – the best day ever

Mykines

Lesson......listen to the man who has lived in the area for 50 years. His gentle warnings about the wind were all too true. It sounds like theatre but even thought there wasn't a cloud in the sky the wind was horrendous – Susan and I were wide awake from 5 am and even Jack woke up as we thought the canvas roof would be ripped off, at one point we were ready to get Jack and Katie down from the top of the van and decamp into the tent.

The small and only hamlet on the isle of Mykines

At 8 am I was up and the wind had dropped. We made sandwiches, packed Jack’s rucksack and drove back down to the port. It was dead when we arrived and the port was empty but within 10 minutes cars were rolling in ready to get the boat to Mykines

The ferry man turned up with a list of those who had booked. My ‘gene pool’ has given me a ‘cup less than half full’ approach to most things and having mot received any reply from my internet booking I was amazed to see our names on the list and my word I was so glad....I really really felt for those who he turned away as I had only booked it by chance ...one of those annoying websites that doesn’t reply......... A once in a lifetime experience and we had managed to get on it

Mykines is the best place I have ever been for a day trip ...by a country country mile....and I have been to almost all of the Scottish isles, most of which I would gladly live in but none ( shoot me down as I feel a massive betrayal of all I have loved over many years) compare with Mykines

We are blessed with the best of days, the day is sunny (which is rare in the Faroes) and the wind is up.

As we board he warns us that we might get wet so Jack and I find a spot under the back of the wheelhouse and spend the next 40 minutes laughing our heads off at those brave enough to step out onto the deck area for a proper soaking. The seas are again big but the boat is powerful only slowing for the roughest of areas of the crossing. Susan, Katie and Charlie go below.

Mykines has a permanent population of about 10 with about 3 times as many houses – the daily summer boat, if the seas allow, is supported by a helipad that does a couple of runs per week but otherwise it is well out on its own – an island of sea cliffs with a small hamlet at the western end surrounded by fields of grass.

 We have 6 hours in this perfect peaceful place. We have a drink in the hamlet cafe and then take a slow walk out to the lighthouse at the most westerly point.

Mykines harbour with winch

None of us are birdwatchers but there has to be something quite wrong with you if you don't like watching puffins. Small awkward birds and better in water than out, incapable of landing smoothly ( they come in quickly, use their back legs to steady their flight and generally touch down with a bit of a bump)

Puffin gets direct score on C;s cheek

 It is a puffin paradise that you could sit in, walk by, watch and enjoy hour after hour. The walk involves a section carved out of the cliff side but protected by a steel cable to hold on to that takes you from the main island down and over a bridge to the 1 Km long lighthouse island. The bridge is version no. 3 after the other 2 have fallen into the sea and it sits right next to the gannets who smoother the bright white cliff side in their nests.

They let you get real close

We lie in the grass in the sun, have our lunch, and then Jack and I go on to the Lighthouse.

We return slowly to the village, have a beer and waffles in the primitive cafe, take a wander round the village and then board the boat back for a rough ride home.

It just feels a real privilege to have had the opportunity to get out there and see it as we did and also to see it all in glorious sunshine.....an unforgettable day to take to the grave

Back in the van we make our way back to Torshavn, get some takeaway pizza, and board the ferry at 11:30 pm. We are straight to bed, knackered from our top day and our terrible previous night’s sleep worrying about the roof coming off the van.

Torshavn - rain coming down in the twilight

 Day 87 Akranesker (Fo) to Torshavn – Denmark Ferry  68 Km Total 12536 Km

                

Day 86 - Faroes - day 2

Day 86 - Faroes  - day 2

The weather remains dry and we slowly head off west. In Iceland, on the one occasion we had wifi, I had booked a boat trip to Mykines for tomorrow, our last day. Mykines is the most westerly point of the Faroes and the boat leaves at 10:00 so tonight we need to camp somewhere near its departure port on the far side of the islands.

On route we take the detour down to Saksun and a walk out through a gorge to the beach that can only be reached by foot a couple of hours either side of low tide. The sun is out and the wind dies down and it is another perfect and very memorable spot. 

Saksun

After 2 nights without facilities, there is a weight of feeling in the van that a campsite would be a good thing, hair needs washing and a toilet with a seat wouldn’t go amiss. The only campsite on the island is a small patch of grass by the road, they charge £45 to stay the night and there are 3 one man tents on it and it is starting to look full. So flaunting the Faroese laws on ‘wild camping’ we move on looking for somewhere to park up.

Tunnel exit and down to the village

We drive to the end of a 12 Km dead end road, the last 2 Km being a tunnel, to a stunningly beautiful tiny little place served until 2006, by the postman who climbed over the 1700 ft sea cliff to the village 3 times a week. It’s sunny, the wind is really up and the camping spots are just that bit too close to the houses so reluctantly we turn and head back, parking up at a lay on the other side of the tunnel.

Jack - having got wet fillling a pan from a waterfall

View out from our camping spot

We set up camp, light the BBQ and unbelievably the police turn up. They show an active disinterest in us. There are only 2 police stations throughout the entire Faroes and tonight they show up but it is to chat with a couple of blokes in a van who are watching the sea for whales.

Whaling in Faroes attracts attention from activists – down at a remote harbour on the first day we watched 3 people try to tie up a boat in high seas. There was a landrover and a campervan emblazoned with ‘Sea Shepherd’ ( as was the boat) and so I asked one of the women what they were up to; they have 60 ‘volunteers’ on the Faroes doing whatever they do to stop whaling. The Faroese government permits the whaling of pilot whales and as she explained, with some emotion, their decision to still whale has been made unilaterally and therefore is internationally unlawful.

We found the 200 Kroner Faroes note picture

The bloke from the van was really interesting – he came across after the police had left and told us loads about the area and also himself. He had lived in the local village all his 50 years, a father of 6, a merchant shipper until 10 years ago when he had a foot accident after which he set up a flooring business. He came over to warn us about the wind that can come down off the mountain at ferocious speeds, more so in the winter. He also talked about the local islands and some of the folklore; eagles picking up babies in their claws and taking them up to the tops of mountains... we nodded when we were supposed to etc – we also asked him about the fish farms and he told us how the whole fish ram industry had died off 20 years ago through disease and how recently it had been revived.

He was a really interesting and nice bloke full of knowledge about the sea, islands, sea arches, traditions....He did however look genuinely concerned about the tent and the van and advised us to move down to the village. We were all set up so we thanked him for his advice and trusted we would be OK.

An unbelievably top day again but can't wait for tomorrow and Mykines

Day 86 Vidareidi ( Fo) to Akranesker (Fo )                174 Km     Total  12468 Km

Day 85 - Faroes - day 1

Day 85 Faroe Isles

Before this trip I didn’t know much about the Faroes other than a Specsavers TV ad filmed where the old sheep shearer shears his collie instead of one of his sheep.....and fish.

The Faroes are made up of many islands (15 of which are inhabited) just as our Orkneys and Shetland isles are and they are also of a similar size. The climate is pretty much the same  if not a little wetter, they have their own language and they share their currency with Denmark. Their nearest neighbours are Shetland but it is their remoteness and small size that really characterises them as does their landscape.

The van at the head of the Fjord

The mists cling to the high ground much of the time and it is home to the highest sea cliff in the world – 750m vertically straight into the ocean. But what is very much different from our own remote Scottish islands is the massive investment they have put in to their infrastructure.

There is very little farm land, the islands are all steep sided, stepped and soil coverage is thin. They struggled to find a large enough flat area low enough to put an airport on and have settled for a site which they have had to build out on at both ends to get a decent length of runway on. However each fjord and inlet, of which there are many, has a harbour and each harbour, without exception,  has fishing boats both big and small and it is their income from fish that keeps the islands prosperous.

Over the last 40 years they have progressively interconnected their islands with tunnels or causeways and connected up remote village after remote village with tunnels. I just can’t imagine us ever building a 1.5 Km tunnel though a mountain to connect up a hamlet of 15 houses and 40 inhabitants, nor building 4 tunnels of a total length of 7 Km to a village of 30 houses. They have aggressively tackled depopulation such that it is not an issue; the bonus for us as visitors is that we get to really see all around the islands and it is a real treat to enjoy.  

Faroes - Fish in water, sheep on land

The drunk sat in his boat

After our 4;30 am bed it is a struggle to get everyone up. The sun is up and I walk around the fjord to a small harbour where I am surprised by a greeting from a fisherman who is sat in a boat. He speaks no English and although it is only 08:00 a.m. he offers me a drink from his bottle of wine -  I politely decline and then we have some sort of conversation about fishing and camping before I make my way back to the van.

We spend the day making our way slowly north and east heading to Vidoy to find a place to stay. We stop for the best ‘coffee and cake’ in someone’s front room in Erdi, waffles and apple cake, jugs of coffee and tea, meringues and an invite into their own bathroom as the ‘cafe’ toilet.....it also had our 1^st wifi for a while which went down well.

Coffee and cakes in someone's dining room

Over the hill we stop off at Gjogv and walk down to the sea. All Faroese villages and towns have some multi coloured wooden houses, some of which have turf roofs and Gjogv is a perhaps one of their best examples. 

Gyogv - picture perfect 

The seas are big – cliffs and massive waves are all around and Gjogv is pretty  typical of many of the small places where the effort and risk out in to fishing is something to be admired. Harbours constructed in the most difficult of places most of which with steep winch ramps to get the boats in and out of the water.

We move on through a 7 Km undersea tunnel to the eastern isles and at the most northerly tip of the whole island group, on a road to nowhere, we find a top spot for the van. The view is the wild seas and it in all directions but south

Jack on the BBQ

It is then that I read in my tourist info material that camping outside of campsites is strictly forbidden on the Faroes....a minute later a bloke mysteriously appears from nowhere, loiters for a while, rings someone and then returns. We expect a full turn out of the locals, the neighbourhood watch or the police but it all comes to nothing.

Day 85 Kaldbakstobotnur (Fo) to Vidareidi ( Fo)     158 Km     Total  12294 Km