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!

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