England and Norway August 2019
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Published: September 23rd 2020
Trying to catch up on past adventures, we are a year late posting this but had fun reminiscing about this adventure and wanted to share some details. Since we are bad about writing and capturing all the details, we decided to make a little video of our adventure instead. When in doubt, we dance it out and glad the kids are young enough to join in the silliness:
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Having loved our RV adventures in the past, we were excited to embark on a new adventure with two kids this time around (6 months and 3 1/2 years old). We were looking for beautiful scenery, culture, history and the ability to see a lot without having to drive too far in between. With that in mind, England was our top choice. Knowing the RV is essentially glamour camping and we'd be cooking our meals in the RV or over a campfire, we decided to start our trip with the RV and then have the second half on a cruise where coffee could be delivered to us each morning. We had done a little research and had a couple places in mind to see for the RV portion; however, knowing a
trip is only fun if you leave a little to happenstance we headed off in the general direction of Oxford after loading up groceries. We spent our first night in a grassy park backed up to a stream loaded with geese and ducks, also just a short walk to this historic college town.
Further down the road, we loved the small town of Tetbury but there were no campsites so we stayed next to a beautiful grassy areas with homes across the street. Settled in with pizza and wine. We slept well and woke up to brew coffee in what is the exact French press we bought along from our 2016 summer RV trip through Europe...call us sentimental, call us superstitious…..that French Press was coming with us. J Gourmet oatmeal accompanied the start of our days most mornings.
Tetbury was beautiful but a the small winding roads were a bit tough to navigate with a large RV so we decided to come back in a convertible to better enjoy the windy roads, park easier and enjoy the cafes & sites in the future. On this trip, we instead went to a beautiful National park (with an abundance of
parking) where we played for hours and had a picnic. From there, we went to Stonehenge (a must see but quite a tourist hype) and then on to Durdle Door where we enjoyed blustery cliff side hikes, coved beaches, walking with cows, a beautiful arching heritage site and Lulworth (super cute down where we enjoyed crab sandwiches on the water and ice cream at the "doll house"). 6th night was in Weymouth RV'ing and was all about the food (it seems to take a long time to prep and actually eat when camping with 2 kids).
It had always been a bucket list item to explore Norway’s coast and famous fjords. With very few major roads through this remote region of northern Norway, we opted to see it from the water side. We chose Norwegian Cruise lines and it was a welcome change of pace after "glamping". We had coffee and breakfast delivered every morning and sat on our balcony taking in the scenery as we woke up. We loved the narrow fjords boasting huge cliffs and waterfalls that felt so close you could reach out and touch them. We enjoyed the culture of cute port towns and legendary
hiking / exploring offered in Stavanger, Olden, Hellesylt, Geiranger & Bergen. Brookston became quite the ladies man in the ship’s Kids Club and often preferred to spend time with his new friends instead of hike in the rain with us, but we realized the win/win we had achieved (assuming we were able to make it back to the boat in time:-)). Overall, the cruise was great - beds were small and we were unaware that only adults could sleep in the overhead bunks which relegated Shane each night to scale up into essentially a suspended creaky shoebox. One recommendation if you have kids, look into 2 adjoining rooms as you pay a steep per child cost anyway. We hope post-Covid to explore other coastlines of Northern Europe!
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