jed the spread wrote:While we are on the subject of Norway, could any of you who live there tell me how practical it is to drive around your fine country this Christmas in a Westfalia Syncro 1.9d and how far do you think i could drive up safely with my three year old son and my wife? How cold does it get up north and how deep does the snow get? Will i need those tyres with the metal studs in? or will i be fine on AT tyres?
jed
Good questions
Practical? Depends on your tolerances for cold weather. Proper clothing is a must. Wool against skin when under 0 degrees, always! You can go wherever you like. The westy works in winter aswell
In winter, you can have temperatures from +15 to -30, depending on where you go and what the atlantic or Siberia brings us
It can be wet and it can be dry and cold. On my lawn we had 110 cms of snow last winter. Some places you'll find a lot more and some places less. Depends on a lot of things. Christmas time sounds like a good time to come. I would go for the interior of Norway/Sweden and thus have the best chances for dry/cold/snow. If you are going further north you'll probably get confused by the limited amount of daylight (extra driving lights obligatory) but what light you DO get is very beautiful with rich and deep colors. And, the further north you get, the bigger chance for seeing the northern lights.
You will need a working eber or an electric outlet. We camp in our westy all year, but we do have the high roof wich gives better insulation than the pop-top. Sleeping in -15 is fine as long as you have proper duvets or sleeping bags. Fire up the eber in the morning, stay in bed for 15 mins, and all is well. A few candles or firing up the stove can help too, this you know
Sometimes it is nice to have an electric outlet. Then our electric heater can stay on all night, nice when it is extra cold or you just want that luxury BFG AT's are fine for winter use. However, they don't perform very well on ice. If its cold and dry you'll be fine with the AT's, if you are on a steep downhill on wet snow or ice: be careful
I'm on my second set of Cooper ST/2's with metal studs (I had a set of those without studs and they performed just fine!). The softer rubber gives you extrs traction in the snow and on ice.If you come as far as Mo i Rana, ust south of the arctic circle, give me a call
In Norway all roads are controlled by guys in new big Volvos or Scania and so on, with snowplows. There`s no problem driving here. It`s NOT 20 cm snow on our roads like many guys think.... Well, you might be unlucky and meet some snow on the road, but you`ll probably meet a snowplow, taking care of it 
. I have just bought the Westy so it is now posable to do a winter trip comfortably rather than try and do it in our Syncro Doka, and am now in the process of kitting the van out for winter wild camping. I am even considering fitting a propex as well as an ebber for back up heating incase the ebber fails, twin leasure batteries,etc The Northern lights is a big ambition for my wife and I and the xmas before last we toured Scotland in our 2WD van hoping to see them, we didnt 
The secret is keeping warm i guess and although we love wild camping i think there are campsites with electric hook up available were we can plug our electric heater in and charge our batteries is there not? Have you any websites or online guides to campsites open in winter in Norway?
