Our journey from Scandinvia into eastern europe begins with another ferry crossing, this time on the Tallink ferry – Baltic Princess.

The sun is setting as we arrive, dipping slowly below the horizon, yet the light takes longer to fade.  We are slowly getting used to this, as the light up here in the Northern part of the Northern hempisphere hangs around for just that little bit longer.

We’re camped up in Pirita harbour, just a few kilometres east of Tallinn centre.  We’ve cleaned out the van, somehow it managed to get dirtier than ever, despite the fact we have been in a hostel for four days in Helsinki.

Our drive from the ferry port to here took us past some of the strangest constructions I have seen.  The all concrete construction casts them instantly as Soviet structures, the crumbling edges and mossy roofs tell a tale of a time forgotten.

The two structures, on either side of the main Pirita road line up to look out over the Baltic, back to Helsinki and Finland.  Sitting behind one of the structures is a large column, a soviet memorial to the war dead.

Across the harbour resides the facade of a monastry, it’s single remaining wall contains holes where windows once were but little else.

Yet if you look closely you start to see the real Tallinn, modern constructions are springing up, barely visible through the pine trees and internet access points are signposted everywhere.  For a country that has only been free for two decades it has already, in some respects, over taken some of the grand old powers in Europe.

The clash between old and new continues as we walk towards the old town of Tallinn.

Modern wood and glass clad extensions site atop old stonework foundations and buildings.

Tallinn’s old town is it’s real gem.  Hidden away behind stone walls complete with round towers and gatehouses it instantly grabs you, despite the fact that McDonalds has prime location just inside the city gates.

Here the contrast between old and new stops.  There is only one new building here and it makes no attempt to be sympathetic to the old. Yet here, unlike in the suburbs, it feels out of place.

The Town Hall is our destination to meet Sarah and Valerio, two travellers with whom we have arranged an evening, again the couchsurfing network has come in useful.

Over 500  years are contained in these brick walls, the cafes and bars are lively yet, if you manage to shut them out, or just peer down an alleyway or up one of the small streets you could quite believe that this city has changed very little since that time.  Until of course the small blue vans of the litter pickers arrive to keep this small piece of World Heritage clean and tidy.

A newspaper lying on the floor, it’s headline proclaiming something in a different alphabet, reminds me just how close we are to Russia.

After a few fairly reasonably priced drinks in the Hell Hunt, Estonia’s first bar, established in 1992 – we travellers disperse again, agreeing to meet Sarah tomorrow for some sightseeing.

If ever you want to get to know a religion the key thing is to look at its buildings. The sparse Lutherian church near the east gate, with its walls covered in coats of arms – deep brown wood and fading gold lettering to the immensenly white and gold Orthodox Cathedral sat high above the city.  Sarah insists that we see three of them, and she left the Lutherian interior as a surprise for us, so I shall leave the final church as a surprise for you.

After that we head to an unassuming restraunt entitled “Kompressor” where Sarah informs us that they do the best pancakes – and we are not dissapointed, the taste and the quantity suppress our appetite for ferry buffets for now.

Our evening walk leads us out to the park on the east side of town, past the art museum and it’s pretty garden and out to another memorial on the edge of the ice blue Baltic.

Estonia has lost its Soviet feel, what remains are now more quirky artifacts that concrete monsters, the drive towards modernism is surprising though here the people are noticeably more reserved than the Scandinavians.

Coming into Tallinn is like no other city I have been to, it is a complete melting pot of different cultures, different times and different architecture.  A truly unique city that should be on every one’s “to do” list.

…

We stayed at Pirita Harbour Camping.
Camping cost us 200eek (11gbp) per night including electric hookup and toilets, but no showers.
Wifi access is included but you have to send a text to the council run system to gain access for a 24hour period.  The SMS will be charged at your normal rate and there are no other charges.

Please leave a comment, even if just to say hi!

Which is of course Sweden.

And it is a beautiful country.  We crossed over the Oresund bridge from Copenhagen to Malmo.

This feat of engineering is one of Europe’s largest bridges and the complete tunnel / bridge combination makes it the longest crossing in Europe.

We walked around Malmo for a bit once we arrived – taking in some of the historic  buildings, and yes of course some more water features.  After a quick coffee we consulted the “bible” and headed south – for the first time in this trip – to Hollviken, and yet another harbour.

We plug in, rev up the laptop and connect to a less than perfect internet connection.

Then it arrives, after many days of clear skies and sunshine we are battered by wind and rain from almost all directions.

The rain bounces off our roof with some lovely plinking noises that keep us awake for a short while until tiredness overcomes us and we nod off to sleep.

Morning comes and, although the rain has gone, the wind has remained – ensuring that any trips out of the van are made with bowed heads and hoods up.

We pile back into the van after taking a shower and head off to the local Viking Museum.

We arrived in Ringsted on the 1st of May.

Europe takes it’s May day holidays seriously and everything was pretty much shut.

Ringsted itself is a bit of an industrial town, though there are the usual tourist attractions that most towns fling up the most entertaining thing Luke and I found was a Jolly Roger flag flying high over the tow from an abandoned old warehouse.

Our stellplatz is nice enough, tucked away at the back of a clean industrial estate.  Our host this time has his own campervan, house and campervan repair shop all in a reasonably large plot.

We plug-in to allow us to use the heater, the nights are definitely getting colder now.

Our host soon arrives on his bike (most Danish people seem to be more adept at riding their bikes than driving a car) and instantly tours into a tourist information office, offering us leaflets for here, there and everywhere.  Unfortunately with it being May day our drive out to an open-air museum is just a drive-out.

Our sink is playing silly buggers again so our host turns to role number 2 and quickly becomes repair man.  About ten minutes, some pressure testing and 10krona later we have a sealed and working sink, brilliant!

Parked next to us is a strange campervan that looks as if it is being used as a mobile piercing studio, I do believe that a man is not equipped for some of the piercings that the paper signs advertise.

A walk around Ringsted provides today’s entertainment and photos can be seen below.

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!

I had a reply on my last post about Budgets from experienced traveller and blogger Lissie from Budget 4wd Travel.

Lissie raised some very good points regarding servicing of the van etc.  In fact there were enough questions for a post, so a post I shall write!

So from here on in Lissie’s comments are in the Block quotes and my answers are below.

I’d say the main thing you are missing – and the biggest risk is maintenance – curently spending A$1500 on torque converter for said 4wd (yes we still have it!).

We’re lucky enough that the van is fairly new (2004).  Of course the downside of this is that there’s a lot that we cannot fix if it did go wrong, most of the injection timing and stuff like that is all controlled by the Engine Management computer and they are damn expensive.

We do have some other spares we will take with us (I used to work for a magazine for the automotive repair trade – it’s not what you know but who you know when it comes to getting things for a good price).

Tyres wear out, etc. We did do 35,000km in 6 months though – you get that in Australia! You should service a diesel every 5000km to – its really a bad idea to miss this (they are less forgiving than petrol in this)

The tyres should last us for atleast 7500 miles, they will be replaced at  the start of the trip if they don’t look like they will.  We will also take two spare tyres (full size) in case of punctures or blowouts.

As for servicing every 5000km – I’d disagree.  Modern diesels (Like Ford’s 2.4litre Duratorque that powers the LDV) should be able to last 12000 miles between servicing, obviously more often increases longevity and economy etc. I’m not sure if Australia have the same kind of diesels as we do in Europe, I know in America they are seen as slow and sluggish but in Europe diesel powers just about as many cars as petrol.  There is even a small diesel unit for the Fiat Panda!

In pratice you will need to regionalise your budget – you cant spend your average in Bulgaria and expect to spend the same in Sweden LMAO. We budgeted on a weekly basis – cause stuff averges out. What about interent and phones – internet adds up trust me on this!

We are looking at this.  One of the reasons we went for the same costs acros the board is due to weighing up living costs.  In Sweden and Norway etc we can camp for free in layby’s and even out in the wild, so our nightly costs will be nearly nothing, meaning that we can shift some of our 55GBP daily budget aroundfor food or activites.

In Eastern Europe, although we can camp for free, we will not be doing so.  This is due to security, many campervanners have tales of being woken in the night by people robbing them, or even just stealing the whole van whilst they are in the back in bed!

Using guarded campsites does not come cheap though – about 20euro a night minimum, of course this is offset by cheaper activities and food costs.

On the flipside to all that though I quite agree with Lissie’s comment.  It is hard to know what things will cost until we get there, and then budgets can be properly set.  Different countries may have different costs and different regions certianly will.

We set out our budget just to get an idea of our trip’s cost. It’s a kind of “worst case scenario” or “most expensive scenario”.  Once we get underway I am sure we will chop and change things and almost completely rewrite the book.

As for internet and phones – we will only be taking a mobile with us for emergencies.  Again down to costs.  As for Internet, we will be relying on internet cafes in cities, in most youth hostels you can find a pc with internet (free) and on campsites we will be hoping for wi-fi access or again a pc and internet.

You can see Lissie’s post from her travels by clicking  on this link : How much will a budget trip around Australia cost? Part 1: Day to Day Costs I really do appreciate everyone’s comments, and I hope Lissie doesn’t think I am just disagreeing with her! lol.

I hope all the rest of you find these articles useful.  Are there any other tips that you guys want to know about?

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.

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?

Holy what!!!!!

It is only three weeks until I set off on to sunny scandinavia and I will admit something to you all:

I have been slacking.

Completely, totally and utterly slacking. My excuse is that I reached brain melt-down point.  When I get back from travelling I will be setting up my own business venture(s).  More of that to come later though, much later.

So here I am guys and girls, back once more into the travelling ring.  I actually put my laptop down today, after creating, editing, modifying and organising everything after the move from Blogger to this funky new Wordpress site.  You can see more about that here and here.

I have got news for you ladies and gentlemen. I can now officially announce that I will have a friend joining me on my travels, which may stop me from talking to myself half way round the tour, but I will still sing outrageously loudly for no reason at all.  That will never end, mwahahah.

And - I have worked out a rought budget. Then wished I didn’t.

And - I still haven’t bought a van yet, Time is indeed passing and I will have to get one soon.  Of course the economic downturn (disaster) means that I have not had as many people eager to buy my lovely Fiat Doblo as I would like.

And - I have virtually no time to convert the van, something that Rob at nomadofsoul.blogspot.com has rightly pointed out.  However my amazing carpentry skills (ok, those carpentry skills of my dad) will mean that everything will be sorted on time. Honestly, I believe that. Yes, I have been called optimistic before….. just what are you trying to say?

Pictures of the van will be post as soon as one is bought.

The travel route is already up – click here to see it.

As for me, I’m going to get an early night and then get back to travelling, stop trying to sort out too many things and deal with them one at a time.

That will be a first…..

And - while I think of it, you can get a free link (woohoo) by adding a comment to the bottom of this post (the one linked).

Happy Travelling!

Hello all, how are you?

Well I have been doing some planning for my travels recently.  Which makes a change to messing around with the look and feel of this site. (Which I hope most of you find ok).

So, what have I been up to?

Well I have come up with a “first draft” of the route, this is by no means finalised and there are going to be a few changes to it, but here it is draft numero uno.  Official Travel Route of Overland Wannabe.

Any suggestions of places along this route are very welcome!

Ah yes, the great C.W. McCall song “Convoy“.

Well I haven’t quite got myself an (LDV) Convoy yet but I certainly have a clearer idea about what I am going to go for. And no, I haven’t got a “thousand screamin’ trucks” in a convoy either – Rubber Ducky anyone?

After my post a few days ago on a good piece of music I have decided to direct you all off to another lovely piece of music, this time a bit more upbeat and comes from my love of Samba, why yes blog readers I am also a talent (lacking) musician – and play with the wonderfully colourful and incredibly noisy Bloco Fogo.

So here is today’s music suggestion – a bit of sunshine direct to your PC or Mac or phone or whatever; Daniella Mercury – Nobre Vagabundo, foot tapping, chair rocking, smile enthusing fun all in 4 minutes. I have now learnt the wonderful skill of embedding videos – tis simple really, so here it is below, click play and listen to it whilst you read if you wish.

I spent most of today dashing about through Kent, Sussex, Essex and London looking for the now elusive LDV Convoy of my dreams (yes – I now dream of hi-roof, long wheel base vans, I’m also single – I make no connection between the two.)

Well I have made a great discovery dearest readers…

This is the discovery that you can actually turn a relatively new and brightly coloured van into a war ravaged wreck in just 4 years.

How? I hear you ask – well the answer is simple, hand it to our dearly beloved Royal Mail. I honestly had no idea that you could seemingly drag a van around on its side and that it would survive, nor did I realise that there were just that many poles, posts and walls to hit – and that they came in so many different shapes and heights, all perfectly moulded into the side of one van! Impressive.

Most LDV Convoys come from fleets, one of the reasons why they are so cheap, there are several major fleets out there and by far the best I have found so far are ex-Anglian Windows vans.

Although the insides of them are a bit tired out they are generally OK and I am hoping that my theory – the one that states that they must have been driven slightly more carefully because they had glass in them – will hold up before, during and after 6000 miles trekking around Europe and Scandinavia.

So I have pretty much settled upon one van in particular… It has the newer Ford Dura-Torque engine in it and is the more reliable than the “banana engined” predecessor.

So there we go readers. This is what I have been up to today. Tomorrow promises a few secret projects and this blog should be available on overlandwannabe.co.uk tomorrow as well thanks to ITSimple.co.uk. Simply awesome!

Also – a bit of an aside, what daily things do you come across that you wish were designed better? My sister has a design project on and needs some inspiration. Comments welcome as always.

Happy Travelling
Overland Si

Hello to all you readers. I now have nearly three hundred followers (stalkers), which is brilliant.  I haven’t bee able to look at all of your blogs because the connection whilst I am here in Germany is not the fastest and online time is limited, mainly by my Facebook obsessed sister!

Please leave a commnent and I will check out your blog as well.

In our brilliant little stellplatz there are many, many campervans. A lot of them are coachbuilt wagons that are incredibly expensive.  Unfortunately my budget will not stretch to any of these travelling mansions.

There are also a number of van conversions here.  Most of them are, of course, Mercedes Sprinters or Volkswagen Crafters and Transporters.

All of these types of wagons are brilliant for converting into campervans. Below are a few things that you may want to think about before converting choosing or converting your own van. I have noted a few of these points before in my post talking about travelling Europe and Scandinavia in a Van – Link here

When choosing a van ask yourself these questions.

Do you want to have a van that you can stand up in?

Having somewhere to stand up whilst getting changed or just moving about can make a huge difference.  If you do buy a hi-roof van then make sure you check for water ingress at the connection between the van and the roof.

Think about where you will be travelling, If you will be travelling a lot into towns and cities then bear in mind that you may not be abe to get in a lot of car-parks due to the height.  I would always recommend taking public transport into major cities though.  Much easier and usually works out cheaper.

How big do you want the van to be?

This will affect your design, think about how many people are travelling with you and what you will be taking with you.  Also bear in mind the extra costs that you will incurr if your travel plans include any ferries, most of them will charge by the metre.

Van widths vary between manufacturer, with the Mercedes Sprinter being narrow but long whereas the Fiat Ducato is short but wide. The LDV Convoy is long, wide and tall.  Making it a perfect choice for conversion in this respect. You may not be able to get down every county lane in a wider van, but fold your wing mirrors and hope for the best!

Weight

Anybody who passed their driving test after 1997 in the UK is unable to drive any vehicle over 3.5tonnes gross vehicle weight (GVW).  (I am not sure how this translates for other countries, if anyone would let me know I will be grateful.) Make sure you check before you buy the vehicle that you can actually drive it!

A lot of Mercedes Sprinters and VW Crafters are 5.5t rated, having them down-plated to 3.5t is a hassle that you could avoid by buying the right van in the first place.

Also make sure you take the weight into consideration when converting the van.  The van must never weigh more than its stated weight, even when full of people, packing and food.

Also if you plan to visit Austria or Switzerland then note that your Vignette (compulsory road tax for all) will be more expensive ifyou are over 3.5tonnes.

Is speed something that concerns you?

If it is, then you may want to look at the Mercedes Sprinter – it is a beast.  Unfortunately the more powerful vans usually means a more expensive insurance policy and less economy therefore more money spent on fuel.  Speaking of fuel – go for the Diesels everytime, try to get a turbo charged one, they have good enough power and reasonable economy.

Tomorrow I will be posting a list of all the vans I have looked through and considered.

Fameseekers can post a comment here!