Tesco decided where we were going this year, as their club card tokens will buy Harwich to Hook of Holland ferry tickets. We decided that as we had never ventured further North than Amsterdam before we would go and have a look at Denmark, Sweden and Germany. A route was born.
Home to Harwich, ferry to Hook of Holland, drive to Copenhagen, across the bridge to Sweden, ferry from Trelleborg to Sassnitz across the Baltic, down to Berlin, and back to Hook of Holland. There would be three driving days to keep the holiday a holiday, but this meant driving nearly 500 miles a day for two days.
The holiday started in good weather with a lunch stop just off the A303 at Willoughby Hedge.
And on to the ferry for the over nighter. The weather deteriorated and the crossing was really rough. I did not get a great night sleep
Rotterdam was wet, and we stopped for a rather dismal breakfast in a car park on the outskirts of the town. We were heading 450 miles to Fynshav in Denmark to catch another ferry at 20.00hrs. At this point I was worried about the weather, and also the reliability of the Syncro. We got on the motorway soon though, and had 250 miles done by lunch time. The weather was getting better, but our progress was slowed by the confusing signs on the motorway relating to towing. Much of the German autobahn did not allow overtaking by trailers between 0800 and 2000hrs (or similar). This kept progress down to around 90kmh which is much slower than I would like to have driven at. The drive did take a couple of hours longer than I anticipated. The van ran really sweet though, but we were battling into a very strong and buffety headwind, so fuel consumption was way down at 22mpg (from a usual 25mpg) The German autobahn was not in particularly good nick, to my surprise, and several stops at rest areas were met with dirty poor quality facilities.
Denmark loomed after the German town of Flensburg and a beautiful drive out along Route 8 on perfect tarmac to the ferry town of Fynshav. Denmark immediately looked cleaner, neater and prettier than Germany, and there was a clear difference at the border which is unusual.
We arrived in Fynshav at 1815hrs, for the 2000hrs ferry and parked up near another Escorial green camper. Two coppers came and parked next to us, and soon got into conversation. They were very nice and the older one had been policing for 44 years. They were on the look out for illegal immigrants, but happily we did not see any.
The ferry arrived, and was nearly empty. Across the Little Belt we went, and it was very reminiscent of the Inner Hebrides, but without the mountains in the middle of the numerous islands. We arrived on the Danish Island of Fyn an hour later and used Tom Tom to locate a campsite 300m from the ferry. It was a beautiful evening and camp was set by 22.00hrs. Very tired.
Morning came and it was raining, very heavily. A quick tour of the campsite revealed an indoor pool, restaurant, and some excellent facilities including ovens in the cooking areas.
We were the only brits there and with the forecast looking bleak we checked into a camping hut on the site.
This turned out to be a blessing as the weather was stormy showers and sunshine. The camping hut had two beds in the eves, one looking out over the sea. The grass was so wet that 4 wheel drive was engaged for the one and only time on the trip.
The lawn mower man at the campsite had an escorial green Doka.
There were simply loads of T3 around, more than we saw in Germany!
We visited Odense and Svendborg, and had beautiful walks through the very well manicured countryside.
Odense.
A trip to Valdermars Slot showed a very affluent country. The supermarkets were very expensive, I would guess that shopping was a little over half again as expensive. Milk was twice the price.
We happened to pass a Syncro dealer who had a stacked forecourt, unfortunately the owner Eric Thing was not there, but his wife let us have a look around.
http://sydfynsautocamper.dk/
After 4 very relaxing days by the indoor pool we headed for Copenhagen, and travelled over the Storebaeltsbroen a very large bridge that connects the island of Fyn to the island of Sjaelland on which Copenhagen sits. Quite a dull drive, but very windy again.
We camped in Copenhagen at an old fort called Charlottelund. This was a great campsite with 16 Howitzer anti ship guns, and the showers etc situated in the old armoury deep within the fortress.
