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?

A weekend break filled with Scottish bars, delicious pancakes and lunchtime soups, and some hidden side streets.

I’ve never really liked France.  So when my friend suggested a weekend in Lille I was very prepared to not like it.

I don’t really have any reason to not like France.  I suppose it all came from a holiday many years ago when we crossed the border from beautifully clean and efficient Switzerland into a rather backward looking French countryside with the old “hole in the floor” toilets, rubbish strewn everywhere and absolutely no efficiency – in fact almost everyone was sitting back, drinking wine and not doing any work.

I’m ashamed to say that I reverted into some sort of British Army Major, and started sprouting thoughts such as “who do they think they are, lazing around, not working, you should be working”!  Of course another reason I had a dislike for the French is their love of disruption.  A cleaner was sacked, so the natural course of action is to block the port of Dover, causing chaos in England and ya de ya – oooo I feel a rant coming on, but that’s not what you want.

So we left on a Friday evening after work, sailing with Norfolk from Dover to Dunkirk (the ports weren’t blocked by striking fishermen this time).  2 hours later we rolled out of the ferry and onto French terra firma, Vive la France!

Lille is only an hours drive from the port, and with the sat nav bleeting out her instructions it was fairly easy to navigate to our youth hostel.

Parking at a youth hostel is a rareity, especially in a city, but we were lucky enough that ours had a small car park round the back.

We had pre-booked our hostel through hostels international, making the check-in procedure incredibly swift and without so much as a wiff of brie we were safely unpacked in our rooms.

Being young folk in a city and in need of a good cold beer to distract reward ourselves for actually making use of a weekend we headed off towards the bars of Lille’s “Rue de Solférino” and happily plonked ourselves in the authentic French bar called “The Highlander”.

This was indeed a happy little place.  the bar had more beers on tap than any other bar I have seen and whilst my travel partner picked a rather fruity cherry larger I opted for the rather more manly 1 litre of larger! After scratching my armpits, beating my chest and uttering a few good grunts I slaughtered my large beer, thrusted my manly glass at the waitress and said “Un autre, s’il vous plaît“.

Polite and manly.  I was on a winner here.

Until of course the tiredness kicked in, and I wanted my bed.  France, and Lille in particular, are looking on the up.

Stay tuned for the next part coming soon…..

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