Scandinavian Road Trip 2019
This is an account of our first Scandinavian holiday in our motorhome in 2019. I blogged the holiday as usual, and it remains one of our most popular blogs. Everyone seems to love Scandinavia as much as we do. Hopefully you will enjoy reading our account of our travels and feel inspired to maybe follow in our footsteps. We will definitely return.
Day 1
As travelling days go, this was not up there with the best! We left on time at 12pm, ready for our little run down to Folkestone and our 9pm tunnel crossing. Plenty of time to take it easy, have a little nap, do a bit of shopping…….
Yeah, right! Now factor in huge motorway delays and God knows what problems at the tunnel, and here you have it! Checked in at 6.30pm to be told the services are running 3.30 hours behind. We go into the terminal, after frantically trying to find a spare inch to park in, to find the whole of the UK, plus their dogs are trying to a) sleep in there, b) entertain their bored kids in there, or c) stay cool in there. We found the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse on their iPhones sat outside WH Smith’s!
Luckily for us we have a well equipped very expensive motor home to relax in. We have a fridge full of cold drinks…..but…..no air con once the engine is off, and it’s 37.5 degrees! We took to our bed in futile hope of some rest. I got up and braved the terminal at midnight to use their loo. The boards showed no mention of our train. Hmmm. On the way back, however, it had reappeared, and was now scheduled for 6.08am. A mere 9 hours delay! Back to the sweat box it was! Luckily, Lyn woke and looked at the boards at 1am, only to shout that all trains were now to proceed to departures! Great, pulling our clothes on we joined a huge queue, and eventually made it onto a train. Good job the weather was so warm we hadn’t missed it. That would have been fun! France bound, and ready for Day 2…….
Day 2
What can be worse than 39.5 degree heat? A menopausal, hot flushing middle aged woman having a panic attack in 39.5 degree heat!
Anyway, I digress! This was the day we arrived in France, had lunch in Belgium, stopped for a drink in Holland and am now sleeping in Germany! Again, not the best of travel days….it’s just too bloody hot! This is Northern Europe for God’s sake!
We always knew today would be a tough driving day, with a lot of mileage to get under our belts, but we certainly hadn’t bargained on the heat. Our plan was to stop for a sleep (next to the motorway in a lay by just off the slip road back on to the motorway outside Bruges in Belgium. So restful!!) Our brilliant plan was then to head to Eindhoven in Holland, spend a few hours there, get a few drinks, mooch around, get some food…..you get the gist? The reality was more like we parked up in a Park & Ride, caught a hot bus into Eindhoven, stumbled in the heat to a bar, where we sat outside (no air con inside!) and Lyn had a small beer and I had a large cherry beer. I was so hot I swear I was physically melting. I have never been so hot, and I don’t mean in a Love Island sort of way. I started to have a panic attack and couldn’t breathe so Lyn sent me to the supermarket next door to cool down. Alas I could not fit in the freezers, nor was I tall enough to get hit by the misters over the fruit and veg, but I did cool down a little bit. We then decided to scrap our plans, catch the bus back and drive on to Germany where it would hopefully be cooler. The bus was, naturally, packed, so we stood with my nose pressed into someone’s sweaty armpit, until we got back to Harvey; when naturally the heavens opened and the temperature dropped by 20 degrees for a little while.
So, now we are packed in a truckers stop, somewhere in Germany, and the temperature is now a mere 28 degrees at nearly 11pm. Of course I’ve just checked my weather app and it’s only 21 degrees in Eindhoven…….
Hopefully our last hard driving day tomorrow as we drive up to the ferry in Kiel.
Day 3
Oh boy, yet another long long day of driving, yet I write this propped up on my bed in my cell, oops I mean cabin on board the Stena Line Scandinavia en route to Gothenburg.
We left our truckers stop by 9.20am, and hit the autobahn. Mindless driving towards Bremen, where we had scheduled a supermarket stop to restock on essentials such as beer.
We got there by mid day, and true to form Lyn rushed me through the all important chocolate choosing, only to spend hours on the non essential beer choosing. Rolly eye emoji! Shopping in a German supermarket is hard without some knowledge of the German language. I did my best, with trusty Google translate in hand, and ended up buying bread “with bear’s garlic” and “behind meat” ham! Yum!
We then had to head towards Hamburg, which Lyn had been worried about, as the traffic is notoriously bad there, and we were on a tight ferry schedule. True to form, our sat nav took us the scenic route, and we ended up crossing the river 3 times, and even driving down some cobbled streets. We took one turn and happily drove past some plastic gating part blocking off a street. Not to be deterred, we carried on driving up a freshly tarmacked road…….only to find the other end totally blocked off by more gating! Now bear in mind we were on a tight schedule, what were we to do…….so with Lyn’s gentle urging (!) I jumped out of the van, and removed the bollard, allowing us through. Never mind the fact my sandals had stuck to the road, we were through, and I even got a big thumbs up from the driver behind us who had followed us through. Rebel with a cause! We managed to get to the ferry on time, and drove on board to start our 15 hour journey.
We had opted for an outside 3 berth cabin to give ourselves a bit extra room. I don’t know what I had expected really, my mind had been veering somewhere between a luxury cruise liner and and Das Boot! It was more towards the Das Boot end of the spectrum, but cleaner than I had imagined, and, drum roll, it has air con!! Maybe I’ll sleep tonight. In saying that, today has been a nippy 28 degrees, positively Baltic I’m glad to say.
So, here we are, we’ve waved goodbye to Kiel, and are now passing Denmark. We have a great view out of our cabin window (I would say port hole but it’s not round), and we are watching the sun set over the sea. We’ve been up on the breezy top deck and explored duty free and all the bars. Nothing to do now but relax and wait to arrive in Sweden tomorrow morning, when I suspect the best part of our holiday will begin.
Day 4
We slept in our sad single beds quite well on the ferry until the announcements started through the disembodied voice from the speaker in the ceiling who repeated everything very politely in 3 languages repeatedly until we gave up and got up and showered. Maybe that was the plan! Disembarkation was pretty smooth and we were soon on the Swedish motorway and heading the 300 miles or so towards Stockholm.
The Swedish roads were a revelation after the hell that was the German autobahns. The roads were smooth, straight and relatively traffic free. We travelled for miles just flanked by millions of trees. We stopped off near a huge lake, and utilising Harvey’s cooking facilities to the max, and showcasing my not too shabby culinary skills I made cheese on toast for lunch. Not just cheese on toast you understand. Oh no, it was more your M & S style cheese on toast; bubbling cheddar laid on a bed of chilli jam, on top of German rye bread with sunflower seeds. It definitely filled a breakfast free gaping hole in our bellies.
We carried on our journey for a few hours until I saw a big sign saying “Max”. This rang a bell from my limited research for this holiday. I knew Max was a hamburger chain, but not just any old hamburger chain. It is a family owned Swedish hamburger chain that has been operating since 1968 and outsells McDonalds in Sweden! Now, the thought of local food has worried me on this holiday; (pickled herring or fermented herring anyone??) but this was a local food I could wholeheartedly get behind! We pulled off, and off we went. Luckily the girl behind the counter spoke better English than we speak Swedish, (plus most of the signs were in English with pictures!) so we were soon tucking into hamburgers with bacon. The burgers were good; on the scale of hamburger awards they were better than a McDonalds (what isn’t??), better than a Burger King, but not as good as a Five Guys. The chocolate milkshake was VERY good, with chunks of flaky chocolate inside.
We were soon back on the road and following directions to our campsite in Stockholm. Now, when I say campsite I might be conjuring up images of grassy green fields. Uh oh! No, we are in a motorhome site right in the centre of Stockholm. We are within touching distance off the vans each side of us and there is no facilities other than a toilet and shower block and the view of the underneath of a bridge! Oh, and we have hook up….which means…..drum roll please….a fan at night! Yay for fans as it’s 32 degrees.
Stockholm is on 14 islands, mostly connected by bridges on the Baltic Sea. We are camping on the island of Langholmen, which is the old prison island. We are right next to a little bridge over to Sodermalm, which is the hipster island, and that connects by bridge to Gamla Stan, which is the old town.
We took a walk from our campsite last night over into Sodermalm. There is a lovely seafront prom, overlooking the buildings on the island of Kungsholmen opposite. The view is lovely, at times it felt like being back in Venice or even the Hong Kong harbour front (without the high rises). We passed a load of floating houseboats and stopped at a floating bar where I got a mediocre mojito. Some of the boats have plaques saying how old the boats were, one was built in 1870’s and is now a houseboat. It was really interesting to see how they live on these during the summer and winter!! We walked on, past all the construction work, as they are building a new bridge, and then over to Gamla Stan. Gamla Stan is full of windy cobbled narrow streets with bars and shops; very touristy. We wandered through to the other end of the island to see the Royal Palace, where the royal family of Sweden live. The front of the palace is very open, but their soldier guards are not a patch on ours, as they are constantly moving and fidgeting.
We walked back to Soderholm and sat outside a little local bar, where we had a very expensive G & T and a beer. We walked back, intending to stroll along the seafront watching the sunset, when we stumbled across a little chill out cocktail bar. It was like being in Ibiza, watching the sunset with good music, lots of young chilled out locals and a fabulous view. Our type of vibe, we’ll definitely be going back. A fab way to finish off our first Stockholm day. At last I feel the holiday has started!
Day 5
We woke up quite late this morning; it was lovely to have a bit of a lie in. We needed a morning to catch up on some housekeeping and get ourselves straight after 4 days on the road. We managed to wash some clothes and had tofu wraps for lunch, then headed over to the kayak cabin less than 100m away.
Kayaking around the Stockholm archipelago was something we had definitely planned on doing, and after checking the weather today was the perfect day to do it, as it was forecast at about 25 degrees, and cooler for tomorrow. We booked a 4 hour paddle in a double kayak, as we intended to kayak around our island of Langholmen and the next, larger island of Kungsholmen, and back along the route we had walked last night. We were told it was about a 3 hour paddle.
After 2 minutes of instruction and setting up with our life vests and dry bags, we were heading into the kayaks. I always hate this part! We were soon off, and true to our relationship we spent 10 minutes bickering before we finally got into sync with our strokes. I was in the front, and Lyn in the back, so he steered, although the rudder was next to useless. The only kayaking experience we had had before was a weekend sea kayaking around the Pembrokeshire Coast a few years back, so it took a little while to feel comfortable, but we were soon paddling along quite happily.
We had to navigate round our little island, taking in all the sights of Stockholm in the summer, which included sunbathing Swedes basking in the lovely weather. It also included watching a naked man getting out of the water from behind; not a pretty sight when he bent over!
It was then time to cross the busy water channel to go between islands. This is where we caught the waves of one of the ferries, which was pretty hairy for a few seconds, and I had a good soaking! We made it to the other side and decided we could paddle in sync when we needed to. We then started to circumnavigate Kungsholmen, along with loads of other watercraft; everything from ferries, speed boats, rowing boats, kayaks and SUPS. It was amazing to see the places where the Swedes like to hang out in the summer; they were everywhere; from grassy banks near the water, to balanced on rocks etc. They are definitely beautiful people (unlike us!) ; they seem to be constantly active; whether sailing, swimming, cycling or running.
We entered the main canal which was quite narrow and very busy, so it was hard to navigate and keep moving forward. At one point we were shouted at from behind as we were holding up a speedboat that wanted to pass us! Towards the bottom of the canal there were massive new buildings with amazing architecture. Loads of investment there. We exited next to one of our favourite buildings from our walk last night. We had assumed it was a mosque, with its golden domes, but it turned out to be Stockholm City Hall.
We then crossed the wide ferry channel to paddle back up to our island and suffered with the wind and the current for the last mile or so as we were constantly pushed to the right. We ended up paddling with our right oar only to try and keep straight. We entered the final canal, Palsundet, back at our island, where the water was so amazingly calm in contrast. Had we not done 6.5 miles in 2 hours 25 minutes it would have been gorgeous to have stayed longer and chill, but our backs, arms and legs were killing. When we got out of our kayak it took a while to get our legs to work again! Luckily it was just a minute’s walk back to our van and a hot shower, then a medicinal drink to help the pain, before a pasta/pesto meal for dinner. Looking forward to bed tonight!
Day 6
What a night! At one point I was channelling Aaron Ralston (google him!) and was contemplating cutting my left arm off with the bread knife; kayaking DOMS at its worst. I didn’t get to sleep until 2am.
We had wanted to make an early start today to get to the Vasa museum, as we knew that the queues could be bad, but that didn’t happen as planned. After a breakfast of soya yogurt, frozen raspberries, cacao nibs, and nuts we were ready to go.
We still made it out pretty early for us, and headed onto Sodermalm to the Hornstull metro line. When we were there we bought a one day travel card. What a bloody bargain! This enabled us to travel on all buses, trams, metro’s, trains and some commuter ferries for 24 hours for 25 pounds for the 2 of us! The metro was clean and bright, and incredibly easy to use. A couple of stops and we were at Slussen, ready to walk a few minutes to the commuter ferry to Djurgardan island to get to the museums. Again, it was a really easy fuss free journey.
We got to the Vasa museum, after heading through a car park with a load of construction work going on. We confidently followed a young girl; who turned into a portakabin, and not the Vasa museum. We turned around to find loads of people following us, like lemmings, so we had to hold our heads up high, pretend we knew what we were doing, and perform a swift u turn and march confidently back the way we had come, avoiding any eye contact! Cue the Benny Hill soundtrack! We eventually got to the museum and headed straight in, only pausing for a few minutes to get tickets inside. Now I had never heard of the Vasa museum until we were advised to go there by a friend. Wow, what an experience. We both loved it there, and stayed for far longer than we expected.
The Vasa was a warship that set sail from Stockholm on her maiden voyage on 10th August 1628. She sailed no further than about 1300m then promptly sank in the harbour. The wreck was salvaged in 1961 after 333 years under the sea, and the reconstructed vessel, the world’s biggest “jigsaw puzzle” is now 98% original and is on display here. The museum is temperature, humidity and light controlled to avoid any further degeneration, and proved just perfect for menopausal women. I’m thinking of moving in!
It is an awesome sight…..absolutely huge! Amazing to see the work that had gone into it, with none of today’s machinery and tools available, just skill and craftsmanship. The Vasa wasn’t just a warship, it was built to display the wealth and power of the Swedish King, Gustav 11 Adolph, so it was adorned with amazing carvings, all with symbolic meanings and painted in bright colours.
The ship sank because of poor design, it was just too narrow and tall, with not enough weight in the ballast. It only took a gust of wind to cause her to list over, then water entered the gun ports and she sank within seconds. About 30 people were killed, two of them women. Some of the preserved skeletons are on display at the museum. They were fascinating! Experts have managed to recreate the faces of some of them, and tell a lot about them, and how they lived at the time. The recovered carvings and sculptures are also amazing.
The sheer scale of the ship is incredible.
We were glad to leave when we did, as it was getting really busy, and when we got outside, the queues were crazy.
Day 6 Part 2
After the Vasa museum we then skipped a few centuries and headed to the nearby ABBA museum. Again, there were long queues, so we quickly downloaded and bought tickets online, and bypassed the queue.
The museum was really cool, with an exhibition on the Mama Mia films first, it was fun to see all the costumes.
Then came a series of rooms with everything you ever wanted to know, and several things you never needed to know about ABBA. As a child I always wanted to be Agnetha, forever known as “the blonde one”, but seeing at that time I had brown hair and a curly perm I really should have been Frieda! I got to go into a room and have my face morphed onto Agnetha’s body, but I’m not sharing that, she might sue! You could also go into karaoke booths and sing along to ABBA songs, make a video dancing to their songs and even sing on a stage with ABBA holograms as the 5th ABBA member. We avoided anything that involved singing out of respect to our fellow visitors!
I loved looking at the costumes; I could place so many of them from videos and TV appearances (Top of the Pops anyone??) It was also interesting to see what they have been up to in the later years.
We were starving at this point, so we left to find something to eat. We found a restaurant and sat and shared a pizza and I had a glass of Prosecco, followed by some churros. How is the diet going, I hear you ask??
We caught the ferry back and headed back onto Soderholm, where we made our first foray into a Swedish supermarket to buy a few things. It had the biggest pick n mix selection I’ve ever seen; brought back memories of Woolies! We headed back to the van then to regroup (also known as taking a nap!).
We headed back out later on for our last night in Stockholm. We caught the number 4 bendy bus for about 30 minutes to get to our chosen restaurant; the Thai Boat. Yes, it’s a Thai restaurant on a Thai boat, complete with its own little beach and deckchairs. The weather is a lot cooler now, (yay), so we opted for a booth inside with a heater. My cocktail was amazing, and the food was pretty good too. I had chicken satay as a main course…..all the yums.
We then headed to Lyn’s favourite place, Brewdog, where we sat outside, wrapped in a blanket and under another heater. From too hot to too cold in one day!
Day 7
Well I said I felt cooler yesterday, that translated into feeling freezing overnight! I did the classic lazy thing of laying there freezing for too long, rather than get up in the cold and get another quilt and warmer pjs! When I actually did that I fell asleep, but ended up with less than 4 hours sleep and a banging headache when I woke up.
Lyn was up early at 6am and did a 6.5 mile run around the island of Sodermalm. It was long and flat! When he got back at 7.30am I was up and dressed as it was time to leave Stockholm and head north.
We have both loved Stockholm. It is a really interesting city, and spotlessly clean. We saw a total of two beggars in the 3 days we were here. The public transport system is second to none, and the SL app and travel card are phenomenal; you type in where you want to go, and it tells you the best way (bus, ferry, train, metro etc), and all the timings to the second; we used it a lot. We always felt safe using the public transport and walking around, even late at night. There is a good selection of museums, restaurants etc as you would expect from any capital city, but it feels far less busy and crowded than most. There are plenty of green spaces and places to relax. The locals obviously love being active, and it is reflected in the number of cycle lanes, jogging paths etc. English is spoken widely and on a lot of notices. One unusual thing to note is that cash is not widely accepted; cards are king.
We left at about 9am to drive towards our next stop for the night. We wanted to head up the E4, to the Höga Kurstan, the High Coast. This is a part of Sweden on the Gulf of Bothnia, and pretty unique as an area where the land is rising annually at a rate of about 8mm a year as a result of glaciation and post glacial retreat. It is a World Heritage site, stretching over 100km with the Skuleskogan National Park at its centre. It’s best explored by foot or bike, but we did get pretty good views of its coastline, forests and lakes as we drove through it. It has Sweden’s second largest hike; the High Coast Hike which stretches over 40km. The delicacy of the area is fermented herring. We didn’t try it!!
Lyn has driven 322 miles today, stopping off for lunch by the side of one of Sweden’s 95000 lakes. We then stumbled across a Harley Davidson dealership in Sunsdsvall, so popped in for a little visit. They sell skidooos and jet ski’s in there, plus all the motorbikes you could imagine. Lyn was in heaven.
We are now at our rest stop for the night, and it is worth all the travelling. We are in a quiet free car park, right on the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, (the Baltic Sea.) We have a million dollar view out of our window, and home made pizza for dinner. Sat here now with a beer and a gin. Life is good.
Dwti Draig 
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