Round 2 - "New Life" in a white van!

After the highs of South America it was time to look for a campervan back in good old England so that we could embark on the second leg of our journey in Europe. We must admit it did take us longer than anticipated, although we were a bit presumptuous of how long it would take considering we had never owned one before and were starting from scratch. Once again why let that stop us!

Well having looked at hundreds of vans we ended up with an absolute gem. By chance we stumbled across a private sale and bought it at a bargain price, a combination of Rob’s good negotiation skills and the seller getting desperate, probably the latter. So I hear you ask........tell us about her. Yes, yes....she is only 4 years old(we were expecting to buy an old banger....imagine 9 months in a 1974 VW, good for the hippy image but bad for actually living in), so 4 years young meant excellent condition and only 18,000km(around 12,000 miles) on the clock. She sleeps 4 and is really a mini home on wheels complete with fridge, cooker, toilet, shower, dining area come entertainment area come office come bed, with combined tv and dvd. Check out some of the pics. The best part is we can maintain in the middle of nowhere as we can live off electricity, gas or auxiliary battery. Basically we can be self sufficient and we would have our own space and stuff wherever we went.

Equipped with clothes, a few books and dvds, computers, music, food, (booze to be purchased on route), mountain bikes and ski gear we were set......Europe watch out here we come....!

In truth this next leg will be allot more sedate than South America as we now have no set schedule, just basically a rough idea of some places to visit and the rest we will make up as we go along. However (yes her again...) we did succumb and bought a sat-nav system, the problem being that Wendy, often the navigator, was prone to lets just say...resting her eyes quite often.

So to start off with the idea is to do Scandinavia first for around 8 weeks and then head to Spain for a week’s timeshare with the Rob’s family (the only pre booked/planned anything for the next 8 months). So here we go.

We left England on a 5h30am ferry from Dover to Calais, now that we are flexible with time this was by far the cheapest option and would certainly not be the last time we would catch ferries at ridiculous hours, ish there goes the well needed beauty sleep again.

The first destination was Holland for a few nights and then to Denmark for the real start of our trip. But first we stocked up with wine in France, chocolate in Belgium and beer in Germany, all the essentials for a good holiday.

In Denmark we travelled from south to north through the main island, Jutland. This left the Fyn and Zealand islands to conquer on the way back from visiting Norway, Finland and Sweden.

Our first stop worth mentioning in Denmark was Ribe. Its history can be traced back to the Viking age in the beginning of the 8th century. What an awesome little town and the best part was they were having their annual jazz festival. So after visiting the Viking museum a few beers and wine later under make shift marquis and listening to some very different types of jazz, we had an interesting cycle back to the campsite.

From here we drove up along the west coast for some sight seeing and then back inland to Aalborg. It is full of historical buildings, castles and Viking monuments. The most well known building is the opulent six storey Stenhus (stone house), built in 1624 by a wealthy merchant, Jens Bang. He was annoyed that he never became a town councillor so on the south facade there is a carving of him sticking his tongue out at the town hall across the street. Well this is just the sort of cheekiness we enjoy so we had to sample some of the local cuisine in his cellar, beer, mulled wine and smorrebrod (their famous open sandwiches).

The most northerly point in Denmark we visited is Grenin (just outside Skagen), situated on a relatively narrow piece of land where the North Sea meets the Baltic ocean. The air shimmers with a certain light that must be experienced in person to believe and what a strange feeling standing in two oceans at the same time, see pics.

You may have noticed that we have added a google map to this blog and as we are using it for the first time please bear with us. To view click on "View Route Map" at the beginning of this blog, you can scroll north, south, east and west and also zoom in for more detail. Also it would be appreciated if you let us know if it is worth doing this for each country we visit? In future we can insert more detail on these maps.

Oh and by the way, Hamlet was wrong? There is nothing rotten in the state of Denmark!

From here we plan to go through Norway, as far north as Nordkapp.

Cheers for now.

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