The Faroe Islands

The ferry from Denmark to the Faroes was 30hrs long. And it was long. Smaller than your average cross channel ferry and without a proper lounge to sit in, the 30hrs dragged by. I did have a proper bed in a shared cabin so had a very long nights sleep in the middle of the crossing. It arrived into the misty Faroes at 2230 so I drove straight to the campsite. Firstly because it was late and secondly because my van was uninsured there, so I’d be driving to the campsite and not moving it for the 3 days until the next ferry came.

 I’d been a bit worried when it came to checking in for the ferry as I’d booked Bertha on as a 1.9m x 5m vehicle. She’s very close to that so I thought it was worth the risk as the next size up was much more expensive.  I got waved through with no problems, as did the other T4. The T5’s (newer transporter vans) are slightly bigger and were loaded with the campervans. At the other end this had the advantage that I left with all the cars rather than being at the back of the queue with the campers. Feeling quite smug, I was second to arrive at the campsite and got one of the waterfront pitches all ready for the view in the morning. The morning arrived, I pulled back my curtain – couldn’t even see the sea for the mist. It didn’t lift all day, I walked into town and had a long wander, but really couldn’t see too much. After a few hours I went back to the campsite and saw the forecast was better for the next day so I thought I’d be productive and get some washing done.

I had a slight epic with the washing machine and it ended up getting halfway through another cycle before stopping and switching off. When I eventually got my washing out, the machine was still half full of water and my clothes were decidedly soggy. I put some in a drier (where the minimum of 300kr gave you 5hrs of drying time?!) and put non tumble drier clothes on the line outside. They weren’t going to dry but it was better than getting my van wet.

The next morning at 0530 I woke up to a quiet beeping. Not my phone, not my alarm, it beeped once then stopped. I thought it had stopped then it beeped again. It was my smoke detector low battery alert. I was going to have to do something about it so pulled back the curtain to get to it and the sky looked like it was on fire – the sun was about to rise so I watched it for a few minutes, took the battery out of my alarm and tried to go back to sleep. It wasn’t happening so I decided to get up and go out, given yesterday’s mist I was going to make the most of clear skies. So by 0620 I was out on my bike, riding up one of the huge hills behind Torshavn. The views from the top were stunning but it was starting to cloud over and was windy so I turned back, pleased to have at least got out for a short ride. Back at the campsite I went for a shower and when I came out everywhere had disappeared again, it stayed like that for the rest of my time in the Faroes.

I didn’t not enjoy it, there was a really good museum and Torshavn had enough to look round to keep me amused for a day but It was disappointing to not see more. That was until the ferry left and once we were out of the harbour we came out the other side of the mist and then the islands looked beautiful! Maybe somewhere to revisit at some point.

Denmark

Saturday 20^th August

It may have something to do with that route planning at Dover but this week it came as a surprise to me that I had time to have a holiday in Denmark. I’ve had more time than I thought I would have as the cheapest day to get a ferry across the channel turns out to be a Thursday, so having initially planned to have around 5 days to do the drive, it turned out I had 9. I blitzed through Belgium, Holland and Germany to give myself as long as possible in Denmark.

This is my 4^th trip to Scandinavia and it has made me love it even more. I’ve had no guide books, maps or internet so have really just wandered. There were 2 places I wanted to visit whilst I was here – Thyboron where the Battle of Jutland memorial stones are and another place, which I’m saving for on the way back. I’ve been using my campervan book to find places for overnight stops although they only have location, cost and facilities so you never know quite what you’re going to get until you turn up.

Night 1: I was heading towards a stopping place when I saw signs to a campsite. I fancied a shower so I followed the signs and ended up on a busy site. Busy with lots of caravans, in fact, almost full. But there was no one there – I assume people leave their vans there for the summer and only visit them at weekends or in the main holiday season which is already over in Denmark. So I had 1 night in the slightly spooky ghost-town campsite before quickly moving on.

Night 2: I’d headed up the coast and through what seemed like Danish holiday towns, lots of wooden cabins in amongst the sand dunes. After an afternoon on the beach, the book said there was a beach side car park that was good for free overnight parking. I went there and it was packed with vans but there was space and I parked up with another British van. Proper conversation! It was one of the best places I’ve car-park camped and it had even a toilet block with cold water showers but I didn’t need to wash that badly.

Night 3: I was in no rush so after a walk and a bike ride I didn’t see any reason to drive on somewhere else and spent another night in the car park.

Night 4: A night on a site for a proper shower. I put the coordinates of a site in the book into the sat nav and blindly followed it. It turned out the site was the grounds of an art gallery and sculpture garden with a beautifully decorated bathroom and a chocolate Labrador who decided to adopt me. Somewhere a bit different to spend the night!

Night 5: I got to Hirtshals ready for the ferry the next day and I had a campsite pre-booked but there’s a Danish camping card you have to buy for official campsites so I wasn’t going to buy it for just one night having avoided needing it so far. During the day I followed a road which I thought would lead me to the coast and it did – right onto the beach where you then drive and park at the back of the beach. There were no signs of any restrictions and when there were still plenty of vans there at 9pm I thought I’d stay the night. By 10pm all the vans had left, there must have been a late ferry going somewhere. I got a bit twitchy about staying down there on my own and ended up car-park camping in Hirtshals – not particularly scenic but safe.

Night 6 in Denmark will be spent on the ferry – somewhere in the North sea!

Brit Abroad

Monday 15th August

This trip has been planned for a long time – long before I booked the ferry from Denmark to Iceland 6 months ago. But there’s planning and there’s planning. I’ve done endless planning for necessary stuff – insurances, breakdown cover, making sure I have the right documents, buying maps, a campsite for the night before the ferry and one for in the Faroe Islands. That seems like quite a lot of planning to me but what I hadn’t thought much about was the week before the ferry leaves. The week where I need to drive close to 1000 miles through 5 countries to get to the port of Hirtshals.

I’d had a look on a map before I left but I’d not decided on a route. I left that until 0630 on Thursday morning sitting in the loading queue at Dover. I typed “current location” to “Hirtshals” into google maps and wrote down the main towns and cities along that route onto the back of an envelope. Route plan done.

To decide where I’d spend each night there is a book called Camperstops Europe which lists all the motorhome stopping points in Europe. It’s a long story (involving being let down by someone, having someone else in Norway Amazon Prime’ing me one, the road to my house being resurfaced, borrowing a French version and realising how I really did need the full book and then a last minute dash to Guildford Waterstones) but I now have a copy in my van (and one in my house..). That meant that when I started to get tired on the drive, I would look in the book, find a nearby stop and spend the night there. So far it’s worked well, I’ve had a couple of free stopovers in campervan areas and a couple on campsites.

So that’s the route done, overnight stops sorted, the one thing that has really let me down is my lack of languages. I left the ferry and thought I’d drive for an hour or so before stopping at a French supermarket to get some goodies for lunch. An hour or so later though and I’d left France, finding myself in Belgium and I’ll be honest – I don’t know a word of Flemish. Being in a supermarket and not even being able to say please and thank you in the same language as the cashier is just embarrassing.

By the evening I’d made it to Holland where I at least know some very very basic Dutch, although wanting to talk to the other campervan where I spent the night and only being able to say Please, Thank you, and Bubbles didn’t get me very far. When you travel with someone else it doesn’t seem to matter too much but one thing I enjoy about travelling is the people I get to meet and language is a real barrier - relying on other people speaking English doesn’t always work.

Germany was a little better - my AS Level German meant I could book into a campsite, ask how my neighbours were and understand what I was eating. I could have done with remembering the difference between entrance and exit in a multistorey car park though and being able to read a sign in a service station to work out where you need to put the money to raise the barrier to get into the toilets would have been useful. One place where I spent the night I went out on my bike and had stopped to say hello to some goats in a garden when 2 young girls from the house came to say hello. I told one of them I couldn’t speak German and she offered me some cherries they’d been picking. Her sister then said something to me – to which the first one, who was only about 7, replied “she speaks English”. She then shouted “Come here Molly” to the apparently bilingual goat who came running over.

And now onto Denmark for a few days before my ferry on Saturday – I’ve got my European phrase book out desperately trying to learn some basic words at the same time as making a real effort to learn some more Icelandic so that I don’t feel quite as clueless as I do now.