Hi guys and girls, well my planned updates did not work, so here I will try again, the updates are currently a week behind our tour, but over the course of a few days we will all be back on schedule, of course that is if everything goes to plan, which it invariably won’t.  That is all part of the adventure of course!

After stocking up on a few things in Germany (where things are a weee bit cheaper) we headed across the border to the country of Denmark.

We were headed for a place called Dalby, on the isle of Lyo, the middle of the three main parts of Denmark. Our journey took us through some tiny roads, with the van only just fitting round some of the corners and a few blind summits that has us praying that nobody was coming the other way!

Once we reached Dalby we were greeted warmly at a very plush looking campsite, which is not the 50DKK stellplatz we were looking for.

The campsite attendant informs us that he has no knowledge of the stellplatz and that we aren’t the first to call him about it.  It would appear that are usualy accurate Stellplatz Bordatlas has let us down, which is actually a complete first!

After refusing the polite offer of a place for only 220DKK (about 5 times our budget) we moved off to the nearest place available in the harbour town of Skaelskor.

The journey took us over the first of two major bridges in Denmark, between Lyo and Zealand.  We had heard from other campervaners that this bridges are incredibly expensive and prepared ourselves for a hefty 500krone fee, but at just 212krone we were pleasantly surprised!

It would appear that Danish bridges work out the price on length more than weight or height of the vehicle, so our smaller van (when compared to other “proper” campervans) has once again come up trumps and saved us a few bob.

Once across the bridge we headed south, by this time it was getting dark and we find out that our light beam adjusters (The UK drives on the left, Europe on the right – so headlamp adjusters have to be fitted) are not fitted correctly and neaither of our headlamps is spreading much light on the road.

The sat-nav dumped us out at the entrance to the harbour, where we found a spot and promptly turned in for the night, it had been rather tiring driving all them blasted lanes!

We were woken at some ungodly hour, early in the morning by the trendy harbour master with his sunglasses perched on his baseball cap, bluetooth ear piece in, and designer stubble trimmed to perfection. In well versed English he extracted 90krone from us and pointed us to a spot where we would be less “in the way” and be able to plug into electric.

The sunny weather is still tagging along with us for the ride so we set off in best summer-tourist wear for the Skaelskor Touritst Information Centre…

more tomorrow, one is quite tired, it is 12am!  must sleep!

Yes – it really is worth three of them.

After a lot of research, mixed with two teaspoons of estimation and a dash of complete guessing we have forumulated our travel budget.

And our overall figure comes to…….

£6,318 (9,175 USD)

This will be split between the two of us, so is just about affordable!

The single largest part of this cost is the fuel. Our LDV van will be running on Diesel. This of course means better miles to the gallon for starters. Obviously a fair bit of economical driving skills will be needed, I am off to find some of those now. My heavy right foot is almost legendary so keeping a tight reign on that, as well as travelling far slower than the speed limits on the motorways (but faster than the trucks, otherwise they get annoyed, and they are bigger than me, and scare me…) will mean a better mpg figure.

So our fuel cost for seven and a half thousand miles is budgeted at… 1095GBP (1591USD). A good bit of guesswork went into calculating the fluctuating fuel prices. With the economic foul-up many people are choosing not to use their cars, or have no job to drive to anymore so there is less demand on fuel, meaning cheaper prices (that’s the theory anyway).

We worked out our average fuel cost to be 90pence per litre, or 1.3$ per litre. That allows for the more expensive fuel in Scandinavia and the cheaper fuel in eastern Europe.

BioDiesel

One thing that I am currently looking into is the use of Bio-Fuel. These is mostly available mixed with diesel and labelled as…. Bio-Diesel. How they came up with that name I shall never know. This is slightly cheaper than pure diesel, and is healthier to the environment or something.

Back to budgets though…

Daily Living Costs.

We have given ourselves an average of 15GBP for accomodation / camping pitches per night. Using wild camping in Scandinavia is free and fairly safe in comparisson to Eastern Europe where will be using only dedicated campervan parking places or anywhere that is guarded. Tales of campervanners being robbed at night in Eastern Europe are not rare.

As for food, well we have given ourselves 20GBP a day. This means that we will be able to buy some really expensive tinned food, wooo! By using the camping stove for as much as possible we will be able to keep within this budget quite easily. Buying fresh food everyday may not be possible so the traditional camping food of pasta and some tinned sauce will become part of our staple diet. Yum(!)

Activities - basically doing stuff. Well there is no point planning a trip where you do nothing. We have given ourselves 20GBP a day for touristy things. This is the only budget where we may overspend on certain days. Visiting a city will take more money than taking a hike in the countryside. My travel comapnion, Luke, has been given overall control of the budgets and will be in charge of making sure that the above theory is actually correct!

So there it is, our daily budget, excluding fuel, comes to 55GBP.

On top of that though we also have some other items to be added to the budget.

Firstly – Ferry costs. Obviously with UK being it an island we need to get our wheels across to the mainland. The return ferry trip should cost us around 100GBP, sailing with Norfolkine from Dover to Dunkirk. This is one of the longer crossings from Dover to France, but is also one of the cheapest.

Our second ferry will be from Helsinki, Finland to Tallinn Estonia. We have 100GBP in our budget for this.

Also needed is gas. Almost all of our cooking will be on our Campingaz kitchen stove. Gas bottles for this last roughly one week, a heating adapter is also available for the bottles and will probably be purchased somewhere in Europe (cheaper) to keep us warm on those cold Scandinavian nights. From previous camping trips I reckon a bottle will last us up to a week in colder climates and up to two weeks in sunnier places.

These gas bottles cost around 9GBP each to replace (hand in the empty bottle and get a new refilled one). And CampingGaz depots are available throughout Europe. I will probably be hunting down a list of places these are available from before I go so expect a post on that.

Also – a budget for clothes washing! Now this is where the generous shakes of estimation come in. We will be taking some powder with us for clothes washing, sometimes washing machines are included in the price of the campsite / hostel but more often it is about 2GBP per wash. So – we will probably smell a bit if we overspend on the budget for a few days.

And there you go. That is our budget so far. We will probably have a few “budgetary reviews” along the way to see what money is going where, but we cannot exceed out 55 GBP per day limit,  this current budget is at the far reaches of my current savings.

Is there anything you would add? Or are things a bit optimistic?

Just back from the marvelous French city of Lille, well worth a visit for everyone.

I have no confirmed offers, no job come the end of Feb and very little in the way of plans.

Depends on your view point but I’m quite happy to be like this!

But life must go on as they say and it is fair to also say that I mustget something done soon, otherwise I may as well condemn myself to a life of just doing nothing, again depends on your point of view….

The Plan Part 1

Find a job for April

Whether this is a travelling job or a “normal” job I definately will need a job in a few months time. Unfortunately my earlier plan of winning the lottery did not work, even when I bought 5 tickets. Lady Luck has probably seen my reputation and decided she’s better off without me.

The Plan Part 2

Find and kit out a cheap van to convert into a campervan.

Although this will come first time wise (as in from Feb to April) it is the later part of the plan. I am currently looking for any type of van between £500 and £1000, using some of my savings to kit it out with a bed and mattress and some other “essential” features.

Anyone got any suggestions or reliable vans? (European, UK vans)

Am lookin for something that isn’t too rusty and might have a bit of resale in a couple of months, bit too much to ask for? Probably – Will I ask for it anyway – Definately

Happy Travellin’
OverlandSi

To start with I thought I would just explain myself a little…

Why do i want to do such a “crazy” thing.

Well its damn well not actually – think about this for one second…

We live in a world where the amount of money that exists doesn’t really exist,

• Where everyday you go into work to make money yet seem to spend half of it just getting to work,
• Where adventures must be completed by Sunday evening at the latest so you can be back at work on Monday morning bright and early to give your all for the company
• Where most of your efforts at work do wonders for the company, but somehow not for you.
• Where you are so tired in an evening after your long day and long commute that family activities are limited to eating tea together.
• Where your ‘life‘ revolves around making sure this routine is carried out

Now i don’t want to sound like some sort of hippie (which I’m really not, I listen to German Hardcore music for christs sake!)

So I decided that this wasn’t worthwhile, nor something I really wanted to do.

Why have i got to where I am now?

Fair question, why have I not already made this decision already. Why did I not up sticks and leave straight after school?

Well really I believe there are two factors to blame here: Me and the education system.

Let’s start with me shall we?

I take 90% of the blame here for not shifting things on. I have always wanted to do things like this but have never really been able to plan anything in advance, nor have I ever managed to save enough money for a big old overlanding adventure.

So I went down the normal path without really saying anything. Off to Uni (Because the schools in the UK are all basically jusdged on how many people go to university this was the route that was “right for me”, hated that, left…

Off to work, started off Okay.. it was an ‘adventure’ in it’s own right as all of life is of course, but now I have come to the realisation that I could flit around ‘normal’ jobs treating each one as it’s own adventure or I could actually go out there and do what I really want to do and what I have always wanted to do.

Me and Trucks

Ask anyone who knows me. I love driving.

I also love any large vehicle. I grew up with my father in the army. He was in the REME (auto technicians in camoflauge). This meant that there were always lots of big vehicles around, from Landrovers up to Tanks and everything in-between.

Since then I just seem to have some sort of admiration for large vehicles, and a want for driving them! (please feel free to use the comments box to remind me how sad I am and the fact that I am compensating for something hehe!)

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Above: at the annual Campervan mecca (the Camping & Caravan salon @ Dusseldorf, Germany

Me and Travel

Whilst my sister and I were gorwing up our parents had a variety of caravans and campervans. Our holidays consisted mostly of travelling hundreds of miles, stoppping, travelling more miles, stopping and so on.

I have never really grown out of this “windscreen tourism” – traveling through Europe whenever possible in my own van, stopping off here and there whenever an opportunity presents itself and stopping over in campsites in a tent for a few days when somewhere that is ripe to explore presents itself, A bit of a European ‘softcore’ overland experience really.

Me and Overlanding

I have always wanted to travel, but i have always dreamed of actually being able to make a living out of it, passing on stories to others and generally providing a service.

This is where overlanding comes in. It provides all the things I could want. Endless scenery explore, a reasonable dollop of “windscreen tourism”, a group of eager travelers as companions and lashings of driving in a large truck.

Well thats how the ideal situation would go anyway…

The reality is probably more like this – ridiculously long drives, crap weather meaning hours are spent crossing just a few miles of terrain, eager companions turn into whining and rebellious and tired hordes and the scenery keeps on trying to kill you, especially the wildlife.

Wake up tomorrow morning, the rains gone and everyone is exhausted. But you’ve made it… Smile!